The Snob in Literature, Part 1: Three Satirists of Snobbery Thackeray. Meredith. Proust: With an Introductory Chapter on the History of the Word Snob in England, France and Germany [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9783112341360, 9783112341353

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Britannica H e r a u s g e g e b e n vom S e m i n a r f ü r e n g l i s c h e S p r a c h e und K u l t n r an d e r H a n s i s c h e n U n i v e r s i t ä t H e f t 17

The Snob in Literature Part I

Three Satirists of Snobbery Thackeray * Meredith * Proust W i t h an Introductory Chapter on the History of the W o r d Snob in E n g l a n d , F r a n c e and G e r m a n y

M a r g a r e t Moore

Friederichsen,

§

de G r u y t e r

Goodell

& Co.

/

Hamburg

1939

(D. 18) D r u c k t A . P r e i l i p p e r , H a m b u r g 11

T A B L E OF

CONTENTS

Introduction. T h e H i s t o r y of the W o r d S n o b a n d its Derivatives. 1. E n g l a n d

page 7

2. F r a n c e

29

3. G e r m a n y

42

Chapter I. W i l l i a m M a k e p e a c e T h a c k e r a y . Biographical

Notes

52

1. S n o b b e r y in T h a c k e r a y ' s writings p r e v i o u s to the B o o k of S n o b s : S n o b s a n d R o g u e s . — P a r v e n u Snobs. — S h a b b y Genteel S n o b s . — R e s p e c t a b l e Snobs. — M i s c e l l a n e o u s occurrences of the theme 56 2. T h e B o o k of S n o b s

81

3. S n o b b e r y in T h a c k e r a y ' s m a t u r e w o r k : Vanity Fair. — The History oj Pendennis. — The Newcomes. — The Adventures of Philip and snobbery in T h a c k e r a y ' s other later w o r k 88 Chapter I I . G e o r g e M e r e d i t h . Biographical Notes 114 Meredith and S n o b b e r y : — I n t r o d u c t o r y : D o m i n a n t themes in Meredith's work as a whole. — Anticipations of the theme. — A snobbish f a m i l y in a w o r l d of snobs. — A realistic a p p r o a c h to the s u b j e c t . — S n o b b e r y and Sentimentality. — S n o b b e r y treated lightly. — T h e S n o b Magnificent. — R e m a i n i n g novels 122 Chapter I I I . M a r c e l Proust. Biographical

Notes

E a r l y and m i n o r w o r k

178 180

A la recherche du temps perdu: I m a g i n a t i o n and s n o b b e r j — Hypocritical snobbery. — A n t i s n o b b e r y . — Intermittent snobbery. — S n o b b e r y and the general laws of h u m a n conduct. — P r o u s t and the aristocracy 181 Bibliography

217

INTRODUCTION. THE

HISTORY

OF T H E

WORD

SNOB

AND

ITS

DERIVATIVES. I. E n g l a n d . E t y m o l o g y . The etymology of the word snob has not found a universally accepted explanation, although a great deal of ingenuity has been expended in searching for one. There are two main theories as to the word's ultimate origin. The one, 6et forth by W. W. Skeat 1 , gives the word a Scandinavian origin. Skeat cites: "Dan. dial, snopp, snupp, bashful, silly; MDan. snab, foolish; Icel. snapr, a dolt, idiot, with the notion of impostor or charlatan, a boaster, used as a by-word . . . " . T h e other theory, which was first expounded in the Slang Dictonary2, 1869, traces the word to the abbreviation for sine nobilitate, "s. nob." which in past centuries in England is supposed to have been appended to the names of commoners as opposed to noblemen in certain official lists, especially at the universities. The great Oxford Dictionary (N. E. D.) 3 cautiously refrains from lending its weighty authority either to Skeat or to the sine-nobilitate theory, merely stating that the word was originally slang and that its source is obscure. S e m a n t i c d e v e l o p m e n t . If the word's etymology must be left an open question, the known history of its semantic development offers interest enough. The N. E. D. distinguishes five different meanings, three of which are obsolete: 1. shoemaker or cobbler, or cobbler's apprentice. 1781. 2. a townsman, anyone not a gownsman (i. e. student) in Cambridge slang (obsolete). 1796, 1865. 3. a) A person belonging to the ordinary or lower classes of society; one having no pretensions to rank or gentility (obsolete). An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 4th Edition 1910. London, 1869. (First edition 1859; I have only seen the 1869 [revised] edition and thus cannot say if the theory appears in the first edition.) 3 A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, ed. J . A. H. Murray, vol. 1 3

LX, 1919.

7

b) One who has little or no breeding or good taste, a vulgar or ostentatious person (obsolete). 1838, 1859. c) One whose ideas and conduct are prompted by a vulgar admiration for wealth or social position. Also transf. of intellectual superiority 4 . The development indicated in 3a, b, and c makes clear the reasons that have led to the theories about the origin of the word from "sine nobilitate" etc., which might at first sight seem rather mysterious to anyone only acquainted with the modern meaning of the word. The dates given above with the different definitions are those of the first, and in the case of obsolete senses, last appearance of the respective meanings recorded by the N. E. D. 5 . This evidence is of course not absolutely conclusive as to the order in which the various meanings arose. Slang words may be in use for some time without getting into print, and even the large and efficient staiT of the N. E. D. could conceivably have missed some early appearance of the word. The position of the Cambridge meaning (2) is somewhat questionable. It seems to have arisen as the appellation of the Cambridge townspeople and then to have been extended to non-students in general (cf. in German student slang "Philister"). Does this really form the link between the shoemaker meaning and the 3a meaning (roughly speaking, the plebeian), as Whitney (Century Dictionary, 1890) thinks and the dates given by the N. E. D. suggest, or does 4 This definition of the modern sense has been taken from the " S h o i l e r Oxford English Dictionary" (1933), the authorized abridged edition of the N. E. D., as it seems to give a better idea of actual modern usage than the original definition in the N. E. D., which ran as follows: "One who meanly or vulgarly admires and seeks to imitate, or associate with, those of superior rank or wealth, one who wishes to be regarded as a person of social importance". To give a true impression of modern usage, this definition should have included the person of superior social rank who is contemptuous of his social inferiors as well as the person who imitates or has an excessive admiration for his social superiors. The definition given above permits the inclusion of both these types. The reason for insisting on this point will be clear from the further discussion of the word's development. That the substitution does not materially change the scheme of the word's development is to be seen from the fact that the Shorter Oxford gives the same definitions for the other meanings and gives the same dates. 6 Skeat had erroneously put the first appearance of the word more than a century farther back than the N. E. D., citing Howard, The Committee, 1665. Here the word appears in a ribald song, and refers to Peeping Tom of the Godiva story: "At Coventry next, where you see peeping Tom, Who was killed for a look at the Duchess's bum; But when her grace rid on her saddle all bare, Devil burn me, no wonder that old Snob did stare." (Act IV, Sc. I.) Skeat had apparently not noticed that this song is an addition to the play made by the theatre at which it was produced and is only found in the 1792 edition (see University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, vol. VII, No. 1, Sir Robert Howard's Comedy "The Committee", 1921). Peeping Tom was, incidentally, a tailor, not a shoemaker. Perhaps the writer of the song had meant to write "That old Snip", snip being a slang name for tailor that occurs as early as 1599, in Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour.

8

it p e r h a p s represent just a branching off of t h e 3a m e a n i n g ? It seems somewhat m o r e likely that the university students, when seeking a humorously contemptuous term for the townspeople, would hit upon the i d e a of calling them the " p l e b e i a n s " than that they would l u m p them all as shoemakers. Absolute certainty as to the priority of these two meanings p r o b a b l y cannot be h o p e d for. If the transition f r o m the shoemaker m e a n i n g to a more general application first occurred in Cambridge, then this University can claim the distinction of having m a d e the first step in t h e development of this f a m o u s word, as well as of having been the A l m a M a t e r of T h a c k e r a y , the m a n who at a later date exercised decisive influence in its final transition stage. Aside f r o m questions of date, which can p r o b a b l y never be conclusively settled, the general scheme of development sketched by the N. E . D. is fairly well confirmed, in its main lines, by the occurrences of the word one finds in the writings of the different periods. T h e r e is one point, however, and a rather important one, where qualifications must be made. T h e N. E . D. gives Thackeray's use of the word in the " B o o k of S n o b s " (pub. 1848, originally a series of papers in " P u n c h " , 1846—47) as an e x a m p l e of t h e modern meaning. It is true that much of the B o o k of Snobs deals with what we call snobbery today, but there are other parts of it that are really quite incomprehensible if taken as illustrations of the modern sense of t h e word. Since this fact is of great importance for the understanding of t h e development of the word's meaning, the Book of Snobs being with reason looked upon as the most important l a n d m a r k in this development, it seems worth while to "give a fairly detailed account of Thackeray's use of the word, an account which will at the same time illustrate the great variety of senses the word could have at this period. 1. " S h o e m a k e r " . T h i s meaning, which is still in use today in some dialects, appears in Thackeray's Denis Duval (1863): " T h e n there is Sir H u m p h r e y Howard, . . . he says he comes from the N f — l k Howards, but his father was a shoemaker, and we always called him H u m p h r e y Snob in the g u n r o o m " (p. 3.) 6 . 2. " T o w n s m a n " . Thackeray, as a C a m b r i d g e man, naturally met with this meaning very early. At the age of eighteen he was co-editor of an undergraduate publication called "The Snob", which purported to be written by non-university men. We find this meaning further in Philip, vol. II, p. 253: " B e c a u s e he ( T u f t o n H u n t ) h a d been at the University thirty years ago, his idea was that he was superior to ordinary men who h a d not h a d the benefit of an education at O x f o r d or C a m b r i d g e ; and that t h e 'snobs', as he called them, respected h i m . " 6 In Shaw's Major Barbara (1906) the word snob is used to designate a carpenter: Act II, beginning: " T h e Man. — (My name's) Price . . . Usually called Snobby Price, for short. The Woman. — Snobby's a carpenter, aint i t ? You said you was a painter. Price. — Not that kind of snob, but the genteel sort." — This meaning is not given in any dictionary. It is conceivable that it is a mere slip of memory on Shaw's part, from a confusion with the shoemaker meaning.

9

3a. "Person belonging to the ordinary or lower classes of society; one having no pretensions to rank or gentility.". This meaning occurs rather frequently in Thackeray's writings and this fact should he enough to make one rather cautious in assuming that Thackeray's use of the word on other occasions can be really compared to our modern use of it. We find it, for example, in A Shabby Genteel Story (1840), p. 46: Brandon, recounting his unsuccessful attempts to seduce his landlady's daughters, tells how they aroused their shopkeeper and apothecary admirers against him, "in a word, all the snobs of their acquaintance are in arms. How is a gentleman to make head against such a canaille as t h i s ? " ; in Three Christmas Waits (1848), Ballads, p. 246: "Three 'undred thousand snobs/Came out to stop the w a y " ; in Vanity Fair, I, p. 104: " T h e Captain has a hearty contempt for his father, I can see, and calls him an old p u t , an old s n o b , an old c h a w - b a c o n " ( S l a n g and its Analogies, by Farmer and Henley, defines " p u t " as "rustic, a shallow-pate", and "chaw-bacon" as " a country b u m p k i n " ) ; in the poem " T h e I d l e r " : "Snobs and swells are peers'" 7 ; in Pendennis (1850): (1) vol. II, p. 134. Warrington confesses to his distaste for high society: " I like gin-and-water better than claret . . . I prefer Snobs, I own it." (2) II, p. 125. Pendennis refers to Lawton, the little Cockney law-student, as "that poor good little snob"; in The Newcomes (1855), I, p. 239: "We went through a line of ropes to the customhouse, with a crowd of snobs jeering at us on each 6 i d e " ; i n The Diary

of C. Jeames

de la Pluche,

B u r l e s q u e s , p . 1 3 2 : " B u t in

a fight, blood's everything; the Snob can't stand before the gentleman."

3b. "One who has little or no breeding or good taste; a vulgar or ostentatious person." The conception of the snob as the plebeian would very easily lead to this idea of the snob as the vulgarian in general. The two parts of this definition are apparently meant to refer to two kinds of vulgarity, on the one hand the neutral kind, mere deficiency in good manners based on a lack of polite education, and on the other hand the more agressive vulgarity of crude ostentation. A good illustration of the first part of this definition is found in Thackeray's "Rules, to be observed by the English People on the occasion of the Visit of his Imperial Majesty, Nicholas, Emperor of all the Russias" (Spielmann, p . 64) 1844: "Any person who hisses or hoots, is to be held as a snob — he does not understand good manners, nor the decencies of hospitality." In the Book of Snobs the very first chapter is devoted to an example of "snobbishness" of this sort that must be very puzzling to those who 7 Behmenburg misunderstands this passage, citing it (p. 6) as evidence for the fact (true in itself) that Thackeray applies the word, in another sense, to people of rank as well as to members of the lower classes. Behmenburg has apparently understood the word "peers" as meaning noblemen, whereas the context makes clear that it means here "equals".

10

read this b o o k in the belief that T h a c k e r a y was referring to snobbery in the m o d e r n sense. H e describes an a c q u a i n t a n c e of his, a well-informed and good-hearted man, who once, in a f a s h i o n a b l e restaurant, ate peas with his knife. Not, it m a y be r e m a r k e d , out of a desire to shock the comp a n y , but f r o m ignorance, having been b r o u g h t up, as Thackeray later discovers, at a school where they h a d only twopronged steel forks. This m a n T h a c k e r a y calls the " s n o b relative" — one of the people who are not snobs all the time but are snobs " o n l y in certain circumstances and relations of l i f e " . T h e moral of this little episode, Thackeray tells us, is that " S o c i e t y having ordained certain customs, men are b o u n d to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless o r d e r s " — i. e. if they do not wish to b e classed among the " s n o b s " . A n e x a m p l e of the type referred t o in the second part of the definition is f o u n d in Thackeray's Irish Sketch Book (quoted by N. E . D . ) : " A n d so a vulgar m a n in E n g l a n d . . . shows his character of snob by assuming as much as he can for himself, swaggering and showing off in his coarse, dull, stupid w a y " (p. 111). T h e swaggering, presumptuous vulgarian — this seems to h a v e been the picture evoked by the word snob to most of Thackeray's contemporaries. T h e type is f o u n d in many f o r m s . Most frequently the snob is pictured as the vulgar and uneducated person who attempts to t a k e on the airs of a gentleman but who betrays himself by a lack of breeding and ignorance of polite conventions or, often, by something " f l a s h y " in his clothes (see f o r e x a m p l e the second p a s s a g e quoted f r o m Lever's One of Them below, p. 21). A good illustration of this conception of the snob is f o u n d in Punch for December 16, 1848. A picture entitled " S p l e n d i d Day with the ' Q u e e n ' s ' " shows two badly got u p sportsmen on horseback, apparently just h o m e f r o m the hunt, who exchange the following dialogue: 1st Sporting Snob. Well, Bill, what sort of day have yer h a d ? 2nd ditto. Oh, magnificent, my boy! I see the hounds several times; and none of yer nasty 'edges an' ditches; but a p r i m e turnpike road all the way.

T h e contrast between the two Cockneys' complacency at taking part in the "gentleman's s p o r t " and their crude accents and blatant ignorance of the hunting code is typical of the average contemporary conception of the snob. We thus see that the word snob, f r o m designating the plebeian in general, comes first to m e a n the vulgar person in general and then to refer especially to t h e vulgar person who is a p i n g his betters — f r o m meaning " n o t a g e n t l e m a n " the word comes to m e a n the " s h a m gentleman". T h e " S l a n g D i c t i o n a r y " (1859) describes the snob as a "low, vulgar or affected f e l l o w " ( " a f f e c t e d " here a p p e a r s to m e a n pretentious, s h a m — "make-believe" is one of the explanations given for s n o b b i s h ) . It becomes m o r e or less synonymous with t h e upstart in general — Roget's 11

Thesaurus8 of 1853, a dictionary of synonyms, gives s n o b under the heading "commonalty" in the following company: " A n upstart, parvenu, skipjack, novus homo, snob, gent, mushroom". Felix Flügel 9 , who gave a great deal of study to the conception of the snob at this period, describes the snob as "der sich breit und wichtig machende dürftige Kunde, der plebeje, niedrig gesinnte, trotz seiner Beschränkung prahlhafte Mensch, der sich den Anschein höheren Standes, größerer Bildung und Bedeutung beilegt, als es den tatsächlichen Verhältnissen entspricht." It might be objected that the person who pretends to higher social position than is his by rights is also considered a snob today. This is of course true, but it will, as I hope, become clear from our illustrations below that the implications of the word were quite different then. T h e upstart, the "social climber", is diagnosed today as one of the many possible varieties of the snob because he cares enough about a place in society to undergo all the pains of asserting it; in the earlier period the emphasis was on the upstart's presumption in pushing into circles where he did not belong, his ignorance of the rules of polite society, and the crudity of his manner of asserting his pretended social importance. T h e snob in those days played somewhat the role that the nouveau riche plays in our modern witticisms, except that the snob was apparently not always thought of as being wealthy. The word seems often to have been applied to a rather shady type of individual with doubtful sources of income, whose pretensions verged on actual imposture, and who belonged more or less in the category of adventurers. Cf. " T h e congress of mauvais sujets from all parts of Snobdom, who infest Wiesbaden" (New Monthly Mag. Sept. 31, 1846, quoted by N. E. D.). It is, however, undoubtedly a mistake to assume that the snob was always thought of as an adventurer and swindler by definition 1 0 . There was a slight implication of imposture in the charge of snobbery in general, but as referring usually to imposture out of vanity, not necessarily for the procuring of material benefits. Cf. Thackeray's reference in the Newcom.es to " a n English snob, with a coat of arms bought yesterday" (II, p. 214). The snob was not only considered something of a fraud but also a toady and sycophant. Roget's Thesaurus gives S n o b b i s h n e s s under Flattery and S n o b under Servility, in the following company: "sycophant, parasite; toady . . . ; tuft-hunter; snob, flunkey, lap-dog, spaniel, lick-spittle . . .". The snob truckled to a lord, in this older conception as in the modern one, but with a certain difference. The charge of snobbery 8 Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, by Peter Marek Roget, 2nd Edition, Boston 1853. 9 Allg. Deutsch-Englisches u. Englisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch, Braunschweig 1891. 1 0 Erwin Walther fails utterly to understand Thackeray's use of the word by connecting it exclusively with rogues, card sharpers and swindlers. He traces Thackeray's whole preoccupation with the idea of snobbery to his loss of a good part of his fortune through swindlers. Bernhard Fehr (Herrigs Archiv, 1909) calls attention to the inadequacy of this view.

12

did not imply a criticism of the acceptance of the social hierarchy as a measure of merit, but merely of the baseness of conduct to which the snob would stoop in order to associate with his betters. The upstart's presumptuous arrogance was another of the characteristics emphasized in this conception of the snob. But in this earlier conception arrogance was not called snobbish when based on social position rather than real superiority as today, but only when it was based on unauthentic pretensions to social position. A good example is quoted by Flügel: There is something very like impertinence in such an entry (in Th. Moore's Journal) as the following: "All going to Lady Elizabeth Stuart's ball, except myself, who, in a fit of pride, stay away; have no idea of being merely with their mob". Is this the son of the spirit-dealer of Aungierstreet, who pronounces as mob a well-dressed crowd of the best bred people in P a r i s ? This is snobbery of the most outrageous kind. (Literary Gazette, April 1853, p. 375.)

In these associations with ostentation, parvenu arrogance and sycophantic servility it is of course easy to see the germs of the development into the modern conception, but the word snob remained associated exclusively with the idea of the pretender, and implied as yet no criticism of the acceptance of the conventional social hierarchy in general. It is our' contention that to understand Thackeray's Book of Snobs it is necessary to have a clear conception of this meaning of the word snob, which was undoubtedly the predominant one in his day (the use of the word to designate the plebeian in general is met with less often and does not account for the vogue the word had at this period). This does not mean that Thackeray must be thought of as meaning nothing more than this when he speaks of snobbery. He deepened the meaning of the word enormously and, as we shall see, came more and more to a conception that coincides in many respects with the modern idea of snobbery, but even this part of his work may be fully understood only if one refers it back to the idea of the vulgar pretenders that he knew his readers of that day would have in mind. Thackeray himself refers to the word as in existence for about twenty-five years (B. o. S., Prefatory Remarks, p. 261) and nowhere gives the impression that he is consciously making a real break with the accepted usage, although of course he is conscious of giving it a more inward sense. It is a question whether this conception of the snob as the sham gentleman, the upstart and tuft-hunter should be considered just one special type in the 3b meaning, the "vulgar or ostentatious person", or should be looked on as a new type, holding an intermediate position between this 3b meaning and the modern idea of snobbery. Vulgarity and ostentation are the chief characteristics of these upstart-snobs, but the idea of pretence and even of imposture is something beyond mere vulgarity and is after all something different from ostentation too. This is, however, merely a technical question of classification. What is of interest for our present purposes is the fact that this idea of snobbery is by no means identical with the present-day conception. 13

Among the occurrences of the word in Thackeray's works previous to the Snob Papers we find an excellent example of the word in the conventional sense of the day in the Irish Sketch Book of 1842, which may be quoted first, because its meaning is especially clear: There was another Englishman at Cork: a man in a middling, not to say humble, situation of life. When introduced to an Irish gentleman, his formula seemed to l e , "I think, sir, I have met you somewhere before." "I am sure, sir, I have met you before", he said, for the second time in my hearing, to a gentleman of great note in Ireland. "Yes, I have met you at Lord X—'s." "I don't know my Lord X—," replied the Irishman. "Sir", says the other, "I s h a l l h a v e g r e a t p l e a s u r e i n i n t r o d u c i n g y o u t o h i m . " Well, the good-natured simple I r i s h a a n thought this gentleman a very fine fellow. There was only one, of some dozen who spoke about him, that found out Snob. I suppose the Spaniards lorded it over the Mexicans in this way: their drummers passing for generals among the simple red men, their glass beads for jewels, and their insolent bearing for heroic superiority, (p. 111.)

The very first appearance of the word snob in his writings, in the verses about Louis Philippe published in the National Standard of May 4th, 1833, seems to be another example of this meaning. The verses are appended to a pen-sketch of Louis Philippe (the butt of many of Thackeray's satires) showing the king in highly unheroic posture, carrying the inevitable umbrella and very shabbily dressed, and paint the former glory of the king in contrast to his present unpopularity: No huzzas greet his coming, no patriot-club licks The hand of the 'best of created republics'. He stands in Paris as you see him before ye, Little more than a snob — There's an end of the story.

(Stray Papers, p. 2.)

In the "Lines upon my Sister's Portrait, by the Lord Southdown" the word is also given especial prominence, occurring at the end of the last line und even being printed in capital letters. The poem is the reverie of a ruined nobleman: Our ancient castles echo to the clumsy feet of churls, The spinning jenny houses in the mansion of our Earls. I'll hie me to my lonely hall, and by its cheerless hob I'll muse on other days, and wish — and wish — I were — A SNOB. (In Diary of Jeames de la Pluche, Burlesques, p. 139.)

In a third poem, "A Painter's Wish" (1845), written in connection with a noted episode in which Prince Albert treated the painter Etty very shabbily — refusing to accept a picture and then making a very inadequate payment for the painter's work — we find the word once more ending the last line. A painter, who is the speaker in the poem, at first says he wishes he were Landseer, or Etty, the happy recipients of royal orders, but then changes his mind: Let ETTY toil for Queen and Crown, And pric cely patrons spurn him down, I will no', ask for courtly fame,

14

When veterans are brought to 6hame — I will not pine for royal job, Let my Maecenas be a Snob. (Spielmann, p. 102.)

These three examples are somewhat less clear than the one from the Irish Sketch Book and it might even be thought that they could be considered examples of the 3a meaning, but- this supposition would rob the poems of much of their humour. In the Louis-Philippe verses the meaning appears to be "little better than a sham king", and in the next poem the noble lord seems to find it preferable to be a rich nobody than a poor notable, while the idea of the snob-Maecenas probably needs no comment. The fact that the word snob occurs in these three poems, all written before the Snob Papers, in such prominent position — in each case the word occurs in the last line and represents some sort of climax — is interesting testimony to Thackeray's preoccupation with the word even before he had turned his attention to the deeper implications it could have. Apparently the word itself had a certain fascination for him, perhaps dating from his days on the editorial board of the Cambridge "Snob". In the Book of Snobs Thackeray's main thesis is, if our interpretation is correct, that vulgarity and pretence, the marks of the snob as then understood, are by no means confined to the uneducated pretenders and upstarts who were usually given the name. "It is a great mistake to think that snobs exist among the lower classes merely — an immense percentage of Snobs I believe is to be found in every rank of this mortal life", he says in the Preface, and he proceeds, in the second chapter, to give a dissertation on the Snob Royal. Here he shows the deeper sense of what he means by a snob. He paints a picture of "Gorgius I V " (George IV, whom Thackeray despised) as a dissolute, bloated, dandified old ruffian, who was yet known as the "first gentleman in Europe". "And it's a wonder to think what is the gentlefolks' opinion of a gentleman, when they gave Gorgius such a title. What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner?" (p. 270). In other words, Thackeray thought that a man like George IV was, in accepting the title of the first gentleman in Europe, much more of an impostor and fraud than any little upstart with a false coat of arms. As another royal snob he cites James I — "James I was a Snob, and a Scotch Snob, than which the world contains no more offensive creature. He appears to have had not one of the good qualities of a man — neither courage, nor generosity, nor honesty, nor brains: but read what the great Divines and Doctors of England said about h i m ! " (p. 260). Thackeray was well aware of the sensational effect his contention that there could be royal snobs would have. But in view of the class of persons thought of as snobs in the common acceptation of the day he was probably just as original in describing snobs among the respectable and well15

bred in general. In a chapter "On some Respectable Snobs" he describes the Earl of Loughcorrib as one of the brotherhood: He has fifty thousand a year. A déjeuner dansant given at his house last week cost, who knows how much? The mere flowers for the room and bouquets for the ladies cost four hundred pounds: that man in drab trousers, coming crying down his front steps, is a dun. Lord Loughcorrib has ruined him and won't see him; that is, his lordship is peeping through the blind of his study at him now. Go thy ways, Loughcorrib, thou art a Snob, a heartless pretender, a hypocrite of hospitality; a rogue who passes forged notes upon Society, (p. 287.)

Thackeray's consciousness of the sense of incongruity he knew his readers would feel in his application of the word snob to the most respectable members of society is well brought out in the portrait of Lady Susan Scraper (Some Respectable Snobs, p. 287). Lady Susan is the daughter of an Earl, and a "most respectable and honoured lady". She gives big dinners with a great display of footmen und crested plate, but, to be able to make this display, lives in penury when she is alone with her daughters and hardly gives the hungry girls enough to eat. In other words, she is a sham, like Loughcorrib, and thereby a snob. But this idea would be an incredible one for the good lady herself, Thackeray indicates: She never heard such a word as Snob, I will engage, in this wicked and vulgar world. And, 0 stars and garters! how she would start if she heard that she — she, as solemn as Minerva — she, as chaste as Diana . . . — that she was a Snob !

One of the chapters on University Snobs is instructive as to Thackeray's conception of what constitutes vulgarity and of what makes the gentleman : "We t h e n " (i. e. at the time when Thackeray was at the university) "used to consider Snobs, raw-looking lads, who never missed chapel; who wore high-lows and no straps; who walked two hours on the Truinpington road every day of their lives; who carried off the College scholarships and who overrated themselves in hall. Whe were premature in pronouncing our verdict of youthful Snobbishness. The man without straps fulfilled his destiny and duty. He eased his old Governor, the Curate in Westmorland, or helped his sisters to set up the Ladies' School . . . No, no, h e is not the Snob. It is not straps that make the gentleman, nor highlows that unmake him, be they ever so thick. My son, it is you who are the Snob if you lightly despise a man for doing his duty, and refuse to shake an honest man's hand because it wears a Berlin glove. We then used to consider it not the least vulgar for a parcel of lads who had been whipped three months previous, and were not allowed more than three glasses of port at home, to sit down to pine-apples and ices at each others' rooms, and fuddle themselves with champagne and claret." (Ch. XV, p. 325.)

Here we see especially clearly that to Thackeray snobbery and vulgarity are practically synonymous, and the epithet snob tantamount to "not a gentleman". And since vulgarity for him begins above all with pretension, it becomes apparent that the idea of the snob as pretender and upstart is not separated in Thackeray's mind from the idea of the snob as the vulgar person in general. 16

F r o m the above examples it may be seen what in one direction Thackeray was doing with the word snob. H e was giving a deeper meaning to the conception of the " s h a m gentleman", j u s t as the word gentlem a n itself h a s been given a deeper sense. Y o u r pedigree may b e beyond reproach and your education of the finest, says T h a c k e r a y , but if you are petty and dishonourable or vulgar at heart you are an impostor if you accept the n a m e of gentleman. T h i s part of T h a c k e r a y ' s book is a crusade against s h a m and pretence of all varieties. B u t there is another side to Thackeray's study which is closer to the modern conception. H e polemizes against Court Circulars, against class prejudice, " p r i d e of place", " l o r d o l a t r y " and all the other expressions of what we think of as snobbery today. J u s t how did he come to this point of view f r o m the contemporary idea of the snob as s h a m g e n t l e m a n ? T h e aristocratic exclusivity he includes in this attack was, in the eyes of the world, j u s t the opposite of the vulgar upstart's idea of society. T h a c k e r a y first of all combats the notion that the parvenu is the only person who prides himself on his w e a l t h : " A well-bred S n o b is just as secretly p r o u d of his riches and honours as a parvenu S n o b who m a k e s the most ludicrous exhibition of t h e m ; and a high-born Marchioness or Duchess j u s t as vain of herself and her diamonds, as Q u e e n Q u a s h y b o o , who sews a p a i r of epaulets on to her skirt, and turns out in state in a cocked hat and f e a t h e r s " (p. 313). Thackeray goes farther and proclaims that it is just as vulgar and parvenu-ish to be p r o u d of one's rank as to b e p r o u d of one's wealth. T h e vulgarity of insolence to inferiors was a theme he h a d dwelt on some years before the B o o k of Snobs in the Great Hoggarty Diamond (1841): " I . . . hear people cry out how vulgar it is to eat peas with a knife, or ask three times for cheese, and such points of ceremony. There's something, I think, much m o r e vulgar than all this, and that is, insolence to one's inferiors. I hate the chap that uses it, as I scorn h i m of h u m b l e rank that affects to be of the f a s h i o n " (p. 29). Here he expressly draws the parallel with the conventional idea of the snob in those days. When as an example of " s n o b b i s h " arrogance he cites the noble Marchioness who wrote about the h a r d necessity under which steamb o a t travellers labour of being brought into contact " w i t h all sorts and conditions of p e o p l e " — "implying that a fellowship with God's creatures is disagreeable to her Ladyship, who is their s u p e r i o r " 1 1 , it is a parallel of this sort he h a s in mind. We see, then, that when Thackeray applies the word snob to other than the vulgarian or the upstart he is using the word by analogy. B y his contention that the vaunted exclusivity of good society, when based merely on length of pedigree and a knowledge of the conventional social, proprieties instead of on inherent fineness of wit and heart, is just as crude as the vulgar display of wealth and imperfect knowledge of the proprieties f o u n d in the upstarts that good society prided itself on excluding, he "

Book of Snobs, p. 274.

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comes in the end to apply the word to the whole g a m u t of what today is considered snobbish, but he applies it by a n a l o g y and not by d e f i n i t i o n . A n d it is this point that must be kept in mind if we are to understand fully what Thackeray means when he speaks of snobs and snobbery. T o him and to his readers there was the spice of p a r a d o x in connecting the conventional ideas of gentility with the thought of snobbery, an idea which f o r the modern reader is a m e r e commonplace. It is precisely this f a c t that must b e the justification for giving so much space to this discussion of the purely linguistic side of Thackeray's Book of Snobs. It is a matter of comparative unimportance whether after consideration of the above facts one decides that the N. E. D. is or is not right in listing the use of the word in the Book of Snobs under the modern meaning. Thackeray undeniably a p p l i e d the word to a number of aspects of what we call snobbery today and it would p e r h a p s have been misleading if the dictionary h a d not recorded that fact. B u t for the reader interested in understanding Thackeray's treatment of the subject and his place in the word's history it is important to understand the f u l l implications the word has in his use of it. When, for example, Thackeray says of his LieutenantGeneral the H o n o u r a b l e Sir George Granby T u f t o , K . C. B., K . T. S., K . H., K . S. W., &c, & c : " H i s manners are irreproachable generally; in society he is a perfect gentleman, and a most thorough S n o b " (p. 302), how much this remark, to modern ears f a r f r o m startling, gains when one thinks of the vulgar company the irreproachable gentleman was being associated with in Thackeray's m i n d and that of his reader at that period. And how biting becomes his exclamation " A Society that sets up to be polite and ignores Art and Letters, I hold to be a Snobbish S o c i e t y ! " (p. 493). These are cases where one would understand Thackeray only imperfectly if one did not know the associations the word h a d in his day. In certain other instances one would not understand h i m at a l l 1 2 , as in the case of the man who ate peas with his k n i f e or of the elderly m e m b e r of a fashionable club whose crime was to spread out his unseemly red handkerchief to dry in positions of offensive conspicuousness. E x a m p l e s could be multiplied, but they are all to be f o u n d in the Book of Snobs and space forbids an exhaustive demonstration of this point. Our contention that when, in the Book of Snobs, Thackeray speaks of snobbery in the modern sense he is using the term by analogy and not 1 2 The change in meaning perhaps accounts in part for the complaint sometimes made that Thackeray lumps everything he dislikes as snobbery, although it is true that something like the same reproach was made of him in his own day. A clear example of modern puzzlement, worded discreetly out of reverence for the "Great Original", is found in an article on " S n o b s " written in 1907: "Thackeray's snobs, while they disgust us, or at least merit our contempt, never seem to provide a clue which will help us to find out what the thing really is and wherein lies its harmfulness. One may multiply examples of very many kinds of evil without exactly discovering where and whence the evil i s ; too many examples, indeed, may prove rather obscuring than illuminating, and serve to bother us a litde when we are trying to get at broad principles." S. Macnaughtan, Blackwood's Magazine, Nov. 1907, p. 672.

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by definition, and that he did not even regard himself as creating a new meaning for general use, is confirmed by the fact that in his later books, where the word occurs fairly frequently, he never uses it in the modern sense, although here too he tends to give the word a more inward meaning than it had in the common usage of the day. As we have seen, in the Book of Snobs Thackeray had taken two different lines in his interpretation, which one could roughly distinguish as his conception of the s n o b and of s n o b b i s h n e s s , on the one hand giving to the idea "sham gentleman" a deeper meaning, and on the other hand accusing certain of the conventional standards of supposed polite society of as much crudity and vulgarity as those of the upstarts this same society shuddered at. This latter development, the side closer to the modern meaning, is not found (barring oversight) in Thackeray's later works, in spite of the great amount of space he devotes to the portrayal of snobbishness of this sort. Thackeray remains true to the sham-gentleman idea, using it both in its conventional sense, for the upstart pure and simple, as in the instance cited above from The Newcomes (p. 12 above), and in the deeper sense, for the person accepted by society, and regarding himself, as a gentleman, but not living up to the ideal of what Thackeray considered a real gentleman. A few examples from The Newcomes, where the word occurs with especial frequency, will illustrate this point. Of Barnes Newcome it is said (I, p. 265) "He hated his cousin Clive, and spoke of him as a beggarly painter, an impudent snob, an infernal young puppy" (the superficial use). In the same volume, little Clive had tried to explain to his uncle what he meant by "comme il faut": "It isn't rank and that; only somehow there are some men gentlemen and some not, and some women ladies and some not. There's Jones now, the fifth-form master, every man sees h e ' s a gentleman, though he wears ever so old clothes; and there's Mr. Brown, who oils his hair, and wears rings, and white chokers — my eyes! such white chokers! — and yet we call him the handsome snob!" (p. 79). Jack Belsize blurts out to Lady Kew (I, p. 125) that her grandson Barnes Newcome is "an odious little snob. A little snob, ma'am. I have no other word, though he is your grandson. I never heard him say a good word of any mortal soul, or do a kind action." Barnes Newcome was a great worshipper of rank and wealth and a thorough snob in the modern sense, but it is clear that here the implication of the word is that of vulgarity of sentiment, of not being a gentleman at heart, as also in the following passage between Clive and Barnes, where the word is used as a formal insult: (Barnes in the course of a quarrel, had sworn at Clive) "Clive — ' I thought you only swore at women, Barnes.' 'It is you that says things before women, Clive', cries his cousin, looking very furious. Mr. Clive lost all patience. 'In what company, Barnes, would you like me to say, that I think you are a snob? Will you have it on the Parade? Come out and I will speak to you.' " (I, p. 265). 19

It is of interest to discover that Thackeray's contention that vulgarity and s h a m were to be met with in all ranks of society did not pass unchallenged by his contemporaries. A review of the Book of Snobs in the Edinburgh Review of J a n u a r y 1848 reminds him that when all is said and done the best society remains the best society (a proposition that T h a c k e r a y would in a general way p r o b a b l y not have denied — in all his criticism of the conventional standards of society in his day he never lost his sense of the extra absurdity of those whose pretensions are not even conventionally justified. Cf. his r e m a r k on the Irish snobs, with their m a n u f a c t u r e d titles and courts: " A Court Circular is b a d enough, with two columns of print about a little b a b y that's christened — but think of people liking a s h a m Court C i r c u l a r ! " — Book of Snobs, p. 361). Some passages in this article throw some light on the contemporary ideas of the meaning of the word s n o b : The original notion of these papers was not bad, but it is literally worked thread-bare; and the author appears at last to have lost sight entirely of the true meaning of the term. According to him, every man who does a mean or a dirty action (for example, an earl who haggles with or cheats a tradesman) is a s n o b . To give a precise definition would puzzle the best of living etymologists, but we may safely say, that, in popular acceptation, it implies both p r e t e n s i o n and v u l g a r i t y . We include, of course, vulgarity of sentiment; and we admit that a loud, insolent, blustering leader of fashion, or a cringing mean-spirited follower, though rich, well-born, well-dressed, and titled, may be a snob. But in speculating on the mixed and singularly constituted society of London, especial care should be taken not to confound in one common censure the legitimate success of cultivation and refinement, and the spurious triumphs of sycophancy. There really is no denying that the best society is emphatically the b e s t . . .

F o r the moment we are not concerned with the justification the Edinburgh Review m a y be said to h a v e in part of its criticism of the Book of Snobs. I t is true that T h a c k e r a y , by slightly sentimentalizing und moralizing the idea of the gentleman, sometimes accused people of imposture without wholly convincing grounds. H e sometimes appears to think that a m a n who claimed the title of gentleman in those days was thereby setting u p to b e a model of all the moral virtues, whereas at other times h e seems to m a k e p e o p l e responsible m o r e for what other people claim f o r them than f o r what they claim for themselves. What for our present p u r p o s e is of interest in the E d i n b u r g h article is the f a c t that Thackeray's contemporaries, although they might disagree with his interpretation, apparently d i d not have the feeling that he was giving the word a different meaning, b u t felt justified in testing his snobs by the current conception of snobbery as vulgarity and pretension, which was undoubtedly the way he himself expected to be understood. J u s t how long this conception of the snob may be said to h a v e been dominant is h a r d to determine. As was said before, the social climber is one of the varieties of the modern snob, and it is not always easy to tell when in a given instance the upstart is being called a snob in the modern sense, because of his putting his ambition in mere social prestige, or in the 20

older sense, simply because of the falseness of his pretensions and the inadequacy of his breeding. Meredith, who portrays so much snobbishness both in the old-fashioned and in the modern sense of the word, uses the word itself seldom and then only with the older meanings. T h e word occurs several times in Evan Harrington, as for e x a m p l e in the scene in the inn where E v a n was so disgraced by his friend Raikes, the cheerfully vulgar little Cockney, who got into a dispute with Laxley, the p r o u d young lordling: " T o Raikes, Laxley was a p u p p y ; to L a x l e y , Mr. R a i k e s was a s n o b " (p. 119) and with reference to Melchisedec Harrington, the tailor who startled the age by associating as an equal with the cream of society: " H o w I regret never meeting that magnificent s n o b ! that efflorescence of sublime i m p o s t u r e ! " (p. 212) — see also pp. 228, 229. A writer who seems to be strongly influenced by Thackeray's Book of Snobs and who shows the same endeavour to broaden and deepen the conception as Thackeray, is Charles Lever. His friendship of many year's standing with Thackeray makes the conjecture of direct influence probable. I n his novel One of Them13 the word a p p e a r s very frequently and with a variety of implications. Cf. (I, p. 43) " Y o u must be a rare snob not to know a gentleman when you see h i m " ; (p. 300), " W e r e it not for a little over-attention to dress, there is no 'snobbery' about him, but there is a little too much velvet on his paletot, and his watch trinkets are somewhat in excess, not to say that the gold head of his cane is ostentatiously large and striking", (II, p. 134), "Ain't a Snob a fellow as wants to b e taken for better bred, or richer, or cleverer, or more influential than he really i s ? Ain't h e a c h e a t ? " ; (II, p. 220); " F a n c y taking such a h u s b a n d f o r eight thousand p o u n d s ! . . . It is scarcely f o r the sake of being 'My L a d y ' ? " " O h dear no, t h a t is a snobbery quite beyond m e " , as also the many examples f r o m his other works given by Flugel. With Lever, as with Thackeray, one may say roughly that there is a certain difference between the implications of the word snob and of its derivatives snobbish, snobbery etc. T h e word snobbish is applied rather broadly by Lever, at times having practically the modern implications, but when he uses the word s n o b it is usually applied to a person of somewhat shady antecedents and questionable taste in neck-ties, as to Stocmar, the unscrupulous theater director, (II, p. 124) and to Paten (p. 301, see above) the m a n about town with the dark past, or to Trover, t h e vulgarly pretentious and non too ethical banker (II, p. 134). It is worthy of note that in most of Lever's snobs there is some tinge of the morally as well as t h e socially questionable — the idea of imposture was literal and around the snob was still something of the atmosphere of the mauvais sujet. Another contemporary instance of what is p r o b a b l y Thackeray's influence is to b e f o u n d in a sketch in Punch in 1852 (p. 192): a most gorgeously dressed youth is shown at his tailor's; after choosing nine suits of clothes and twelve pairs of trousers he adjures the tailor severely to 13

Tauchnitz Edition, 1860.

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give h i m " p a t t e r n s that won't be worn by snobs". This is the typically Thackerayan procedure of laughing at the pot for calling the kettle black. Cf. his r e m a r k in the P r e f a c e to the B o o k of S n o b s : " Y o u must not j u d g e hastily or vulgarly of S n o b s : to do so shows that you are yourself a S n o b " (p. 261). I n general Thackeray's influence on the development of the word must have been immense, in view of the great popularity of the Snob Papers, and there is probably no doubt that in large part we owe our present conception of snobbery to him. One may say this without rejecting the contention we have been defending that to understand Thackeray one must know the contemporary idea of the snob. A m a n today could write a Book of Parvenus (not to imply that parvenu and snob were fully synonymous words in Thackeray's day), putting the emphasis, let us say, on some sorte of m e n t a l parvenu-hood that would include p e o p l e not conventionally called such, and one could conceive that in some years people might come to think only of this type and to call the original parvenus by that n a m e only because they resembled this wider type. T h i s is, if our observations are correct, more or less the course that the word snob has followed. If someone could give a really exhaustive study to the history of the word after Thackeray, it would probably be found that the derivatives of the word developed more quickly than the word itself. Long after the word snobbish h a d taken on much of what it today implies we f i n d 1 4 the conception of the snob retaining associations with the idea of the upstart, or at any rate of the newcomer in society, although it is not easy to see how certain of the characteristics implied by the adjective — prejudices of birth, f o r instance — could have been thought of as exclusively appertaining to the upstart. L a t e r examples of the older use are found in Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), as on p. 185, where he speaks of " t h e period of snobbery (if the word may be used without any odious implication) — the period of uncertainty and of transition f r o m a lower to the u p p e r levels of pecuniary culture", and on p. 50: It is worthy of notice that the possibility of producing . . . idiosyncrasies of person and manner by shrewd mimicry and a systematic drill have been turned to account in the deliberate production of a cultured class —• often with a very happy effect. In this way, by the process vulgarly known as snobbery, a syncopated evolution of gentle birth and breeding is achieved in the case of a goodly number of families and lines of descent.

We notice that the idea of rising from one social level to another is here still taken as an essential of the conception. T h e definition in the Century Dictionary of 1890, however, indicates that alongside of the climber there was another type of snob then recognized: " S n o b b i s h : a) Vulgarly ostentatious; desirous to seem better M

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For example in the many examples given by the N. E. D. and by Fliigel.

than one is, or to have a social position not deserved; inclined to ape gentility. b) Proud, conceited or insolent over adventitious advantages." T h i s is the first dictionary documentation for the f a c t that the parvenu or climbing element was ceasing to be a sine qua non of the conception of the snob. It indicates that the attitude described under b ) was being accepted as one kind of snobbishness by d e f i n i t i o n and not merely by a n a l o g y , as in Thackeray, and therefore that the modern period of the word's history may be definitely considered to have begun. T h e m o d e r n c o n c e p t i o n . "One whose ideas and conduct are prompted by a vulgar admiration for wealth or social position." Since this definition might be thought to give the impression that the essence of the problem of snobbery consists in the distinction between an admiration f o r wealth or social position that is vulgar and one that is not vulgar, let us consult some other modern definitions. T h e Pocket Oxford (1927) gives: "Person whose conduct or opinions are influenced by the acceptance of social position or wealth in place of merit as a criterion" and Webster's: " S u c h a one as modifies his mental or outward attitude towards persons or matters because of wealth, station, or the lack of t h e m . " P r e s u m a b l y the first definition meant the same thing as these, but was so worded to allow for the fact that it is neither snobbish nor vulgar to think that wealth and social position are very pleasant and useful things to b e in possession of but only to assume that their possession is in itself a sign of superior merit. These definitions undoubtedly cover the conception of snobbishness that is current at the present day, and they avoid the mistake of definitions in certain other dictionaries that try to enumerate the different varieties of the snob and invariably leave out some important type or other. On the other hand, it might be said that they define snobbism rather than the snob. An English person asked to describe a snob will usually not put the matter in such general terms, but will describe someone who, accepting the conventional hierarchy, is especially intent on asserting a f a v o u r a b l e position in it for himself, whether by insisting on the barriers between his class and the ones beneath it or by trying to improve his position by gaining entry into a class above his own. In other words, the snob proper is thought of not only as passively accepting some kind of faulty standard of judging h u m a n beings, but also as desiring to profit by the standard himself. T h e wholly disinterested acceptance of social distinctions, whether expressed in the exaggerated respect for social superiors on the p a r t of people without any social pretensions themselves, or in the pride in "knowing their p l a c e " sometimes found in the more conservative members of the humbler social ranks, which comes under the definitions above quoted and which is frequently the side emphasized in literary discussions of the subject, is seldom included in the popular conception of the snob proper. T h i s does not mean, of course, that the respect f o r social superiors is excluded from this conception of the snob, but only that the full-fledged 23

snob is thought -of as combining it with a definite insistence on his own social importance. "A snob is a person who despises everyone who doesn't despise him" — this popular attempt at epigrammatic definition gives a good idea of the more concrete and human application of the word as opposed to the somewhat abstract formulations we have quoted from the dictionaries. This point has been mentioned because in the various discussions of the psychological or sociological significance of snobbery that the author hopes to treat in a second volume to this study it will be found that some of the writers start out from the idea of snobbism 1 5 in general whereas others are thinking more of the figure of the snob proper as described above, with resulting differences in the interpretation of the main problems involved. It should be noted, also, that one can still find a conservative conception of snobbery that has retained much of the older association of the snob with the upstart. Compare for example the following definition from the "University Dictionary of the English Language", 1932, ed. Henry Cecil Wyld: Snob. A person who pretends, from vulgar ostentation, to be better than he is; one who pretends to belong or to be familiar with people of high social standing or of great wealth or reputation; one who puts an exaggerated and vulgar estimate on rank, wealth, fashionable society or distinction and endeavours to conceal his own supposed inferior position or connections.

This definition, with its emphasis on social pretence in the literal sense of the word, limits snobbery to the socially insecure. In the light of present usage this view would seem to be inadequate. An article by S. Macnaughtan called "Snobs", written in 1907, for example, shows very clearly that by that date the word was applied indifferently to the socially secure and the insecure, as the following examples testify: If he (the snob) belongs to a high social position he emphasises it, and declines to know his social inferiors, fearing lest their superiority to him in other more important matters might show itself. While if he is of a low social status, he apes or affects his social superiors, knowing he cannot rely upon his own merits and natural talents, (p. 677.) The unkind snob is sometimes a person of rank, obsessed with the idea of caste, and with a snub ready for every one who intrudes into his or her charmed circle, (p. 678.) Blackwood's Magazine, Nov. 1907.

It is not difficult to understand how the conservative view of the 15 It will be noticed that the word "snobbism" is used here instead of the more usual "snobbery". These two words are as a rule used as practical synonyms, but it is perhaps possible to make a rather useful distinction between them. In this study the word s n o b b i s m is to be understood as referring more especially to the passive acceptance of a standard of judgment based on the social hierarchy, whereas s n o b b e r y will be used to designate the more personal application of this standard, as in the popular conception of the snob that we have described. The first occurrence of the word snobbism noted by the N. E. D. is in George Eliot's Essays (1856) : "As long as snobbism runs in the blood, why should it not run in our speech?" (p. 267, 1884 edition). The word snobbery is considerably older.

24

meaning of the word snob has been able to persist in the f a c e of usage to the contrary. What has hindered the recognition of the change that has been taking place is the fact that even in the strictly modern application of the word the snobbishness of the socially insecure is likely to be given especial prominence, f r o m the psychological fact, so often noted as to b e a commonplace, that the newly arrived at any eminence are as a rule much m o r e conspicuously insistent on the barriers between themselves and the non-arrived than are the people who have been at the top for a long time. T h e A n t i s n o b . T h e word " a n t i s n o b " was invented by Archibald L y a l l to designate what other writers have sometimes called the "inverted snob", and the term is recorded here because it serves as a u s e f u l designation for a variety of snob that enters into a number of modern discussions of our subject. T h e campaign against snobbery in English-speaking countries has been so successful in bringing the vice into disrepute that a n u m b e r of people have gone to the other extreme and show the same shallowness of j u d g m e n t in the opposite direction. L y a l l gives the following e x a m p l e : P e r h a p s the m o s t difficult of all internal r e f o r m s a m a n can set h i m s e l f is the eradication of s n o b b e r y f r o m his own character. When he thinks h e has a c h i e v e d it, h e generally finds that h e has only succeeded in replacing it by an e q u a l l y tyrannous antisnobbery. S u c h w a s the fate of an O x f o r d f r i e n d of m i n e , who h a d eighteen thousand a year and a title, and who w a s such a h i d e b o u n d antisnob that in his last year or two he w o u l d hardly s p e a k to anyone a b o v e the social level of a c o m m e r c i a l traveller. (It ¡sn't Done, p. 83.)

S. Macnaughtan also brings the t y p e : T h e r e is a subtle description of a snob given in a recent novel, in which it is said of a w o m a n in the b o o k , that she thought it the height of vulgarity to mention a title. W h e k n o w how s n o b b i s h and m e a n she m u s t have b e e n to w h o m these things, which are after all b u t the fringe of l i f e — or at best the s y m b o l of something higher — s h o u l d have s e e m e d of such i m p o r t a n c e as either to b e mentioned or not b e m e n t i o n e d . ( S n o b s , p. 678.)

A contributor to the Atlantic Monthly suggests that the inverted snob should take to heart the lines of Gilbert's impassioned Peer in lolanthe: S p u r n not the nobly b o r n With love affected, N o r treat with virtuous scorn T h e well connected. H i g h rank involves no s h a m e —I boast an e q u a l c l a i m With h i m of h u m b l e n a m e T o be r e s p e c t e d !

( F e b r u a r y 1922, p. 278.)

A German portrait of one variety of the antisnob, sketched b y F r a n z Werfel, may be mentioned here because it is given as a parallel to the upstart snobs of Thackeray's d a y : 25

Es gibt jetzt e b e n s o oft den kommunistischen Snob, wie es früher den aristokratischen gegeben hat. Ihn charakterisiert die gleiche wurzellose Unsicherheit d e m Proletariat gegenüber, wie sie der andere vor der Gesellschaft gezeigt hat. Er kennt und versteht ebenso wenig die Arbeiterschaft wie jener den A d e l gekannt hat. Nichts anderes war die gesellschaftliche U n d u l d s a m k e i t des arrivierten Strebers als es zurzeit der parteipathetische Radikalismus d e s P r o l e t s n o b s ist. (Der Snobismus als geistige Weltmacht, S. 18.)

It is to b e noted that the word "antisnob" as used by Lyall and as it will b e used in this study, does not mean t h e honest o p p o n e n t o f s n o b b e r y , b u t t h e person who is a s n o b i n a n inverted s e n s e , who regards, or affects to regard, h i g h social r a n k as a sign of inferiority in itself. H e is not, as h e usually flatters himself, t h e o p p o s i t e of a snob b u t really the same thing, in t h a t his judgments, like those of the snob, are u n d u l y influenced by differences in social rank. If one described snobbery as t h e i n a b i l i t y t o t h i n k obj e c t i v e l y a b o u t c l a s s d i s t i n c t i o n s , this definition would probably b e f o u n d to cover most of the current varieties and would have the advantage of including also t h e antisnob. T r a n s f e r r e d u s e s o f t h e w o r d . I n E n g l a n d t h e word snob occurring alone is t a k e n to mean the social snob. I t is, however, f r e q u e n t l y used in a t r a n s f e r r e d sense in a n u m b e r of other senses, a n d one speaks of literary snobs and art snobs, music snobs, moral and e t h i c a l 1 6 snobs, and even God-snobs 1 7 . Thackeray wrote a chapter on "Literary Snobs", b u t was t h i n k i n g chiefly of ordinary snobs, who h a p p e n e d to be m e n of letters: in accordance with his conception of snobbery he emphasizes t h e i r b a d manners, their jealousies, their toadying to the great, and t h e vulgarity of their pictures of supposed high life. In most of his other transferred uses of t h e word h e t h i n k s of the snob as a sham, which is a somewhat h a r s h e r picture t h a n is suggested by t h e word today, but he often gives d e l i g h t f u l pictures of the more harmless f r a u d s among the literati (cf. for e x a m p l e his Conversazione Snobs, Ch. XXV). I n general it may probably be said that in English usage t h e r e is not very much u n i f o r m i t y in the way the transferred use of t h e word is made. T h e r e is, f o r example, no fixed type that would be universally recognized as t h e intellectual snob. Each writer applies t h e word pretty much at his own discretion and according to his own conception of w h a t constitutes t h e ordinary k i n d of snob, and the word implies at times an exaggerated a d m i r a t i o n f o r or imitation of the celebrities in a certain field, or an i n f a t u a t i o n w i t h a certain topic (sport snobs, music snobs), or a shallow, conventional, pretentious or "high-brow" way of being interested in intellectual or aesthetic matters. (For various examples see "Society Racket" by Patrick B a l f o u r , passim.) 16 17

26

Cf. Shaw, "Getting Married", description of Edith. Cf. A l d o u s H u x l e y , P o i n t Counter Point, Tauchnitz, II, p. 282.

S u m m a r y . In the above review of the history of the word s n o t in England we found that the development had been somewhat more complicated than could be fully indicated by a brief article in a dictionary. We found above all that although Thackeray probably had a great influence in moulding the present meaning of the word his own use of it is much better understood from reference to the older sense of the word referring exclusively to the sham gentleman than from the modern meaning. We found further that the upstart or social climber was long considered the snob proper, even after the word snobbish had come to have its modern sense of the acceptance of social position instead of merit as a criterion. All these facts have to be kept in mind when older discussions of the problems connected with snobbery are being considered. In the examination of present day usage we found that the modern conception of s n o b b i s m is very broad, as is shown by the definition " t h e acceptance of social position instead of merit as a criterion", but that in popular acceptation the s n o b p r o p e r is thought of as the person intent on asserting as favourable a position as possible for himself in the social hierarchy. We noted further that there is a conservative use of the word according to which the snob is still looked on as the person laying claim to a social position to which he is not technically entitled. Finally, we noted the various ways in which the word can be used in a transferred sense. I t might be thought that our discovery that Thackeray's use of the word, looked at from the purely linguistic side, must be understood from the old idea of the snob as the upstart gives grounds for considering this conservative usage more "correct". B u t in all linguistic matters usage is king, and the predominant usage today, both colloquial and literary, undoubtedly considers the social upstart only one of the many varieties of the genus snob. Consequently, unless it is clear from the context that an older meaning is referred to, the word as used in this study is to be understood in the broader modern sense, i. e., if we may take up the formulation given on page 26 with which we tried also to include Archibald Lyall's "antisnob", the person who is unable to think objectively about class distinctions. Addendum:

The

American

Snob.

In spite of the fact that the scope of this study is limited to England, France and Germany, it may be useful to say a few words about the American conception of the snob. T h e English use of the word snob is recognized as the authoritative standard in the United States, and the dictionary definitions and much literary usage are in essential conformity with i t 1 8 . In colloquial usage, however, one remarks certain differences, which are, it is true, only a 1 8 Examples of the orthodox English use: " W h a t Billingsgate Thought", W. A. Dorland, Boston, 1919; Atlantic Monthly, F e b . 1922, "What K i n d of a Snob are Y o u ? "

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continuation of tendencies also to be f o u n d in England, but which have taken u p a m o r e exclusive position in general usage a n d h a v e affected a great deal of literary usage. S p e a k i n g generally, the snob in this American sense is the person whose social position, as such, is acknowledged but who m a k e s himself disliked by his exclusiveness and "undemocraticness". In other words, of the two attitudes of snobbery, the respect for or imitation of social superiors and t h e contempt for social inferiors, only the latter is called snobbish. It is very exceptional that the word snobbery is a p p l i e d to the ambition to rise socially, or to such an attitude as, say, the rather undignified adulation p a i d by some Americans to titled foreign visitors, which in E n g l i s h discussions of America is often cited as an e x a m p l e of A m e r i c a n snobbery. T h e implication involved in the charge of social snobbery is naturally that of a superficial standard of j u d g m e n t , but this s t a n d a r d of j u d g m e n t is only thought of as s n o b b i s h when it is taken as the basis f o r an excessive sense of s u p e r i o r i t y . Very frequently, too, the criticism of the standard of j u d g m e n t itself is given a wholly subordinate position and an excessive sense of superiority on any basis whatever is called snobbish, as will be seen from some of the examples given below. A request m a d e by the Forum ( J u n e 1929) for definitions of the snob f r o m its readers brought forth a number of formulations that illustrate what has been said above. I n practically every case the air of s u p e r i o r i t y was cited as the conspicuous side of the snob's character. We cite two e x a m p l e s that are especially t y p i c a l : A snob is an individual who makes others conscious of his belief in his own superiority and who is continually endeavoring to impress upon others their own insignificance. A snob may be an individual who considers himself superior to others because of some advantage such as talent, position, or wealth, and lets everyone know it by word and action; or he may be one who tries to conceal a consciousness of inferiority under a haughty, patronizing manner.

T h e mental i m a g e evoked b y the word snob taken in this sense is racily described by J . L. Sherard ( " S n o b s " , Harper's Weekly, J a n . 8, 1916): " D i d you ever start on a stroll of a fine morning, in the free and easy m a n n e r of a plain, decent American citizen, and meet one of those fellows who looked down on you with coldly arched eyebrows and then bit off a frozen word or two as he passed his g r e e t i n g ? " T h i s shifting of e m p h a s i s is p e r h a p s a logical development in a country like the United States; in a land without a titled aristocracy, where the sense of social hierarchy, although distinctly present, is somewhat ill-defined, the prestige of social position is less in danger of being overrated b y the people who lack it than of being unduly insisted u p o n b y those who consider themselves in the possession of it. 28

II. F r a n c e 20 . T h e first a p p e a r a n c e of t h e w o r d snob in F r a n c e is r e c o r d e d f o r t h e year 1843, t h r e e y e a r s b e f o r e T h a c k e r a y ' s S n o b P a p e r s , a n d w o u l d in view of its r e m a r k a b l y e a r l y d a t e b e of s p e c i a l interest if it w e r e not t h a t it p r o b a b l y does n o t a c t u a l l y r e p r e s e n t t h e i n t r o d u c t i o n of t h e w o r d i n t o F r e n c h u s a g e , s i n c e it is o b v i o u s l y a q u o t a t i o n f r o m t h e E n g l i s h . It is f o u n d in Les souvenirs du chevalier de Cussy 21, w h e r e it is s a i d of a c e r t a i n M. d e B o u t r a y e , a d i p l o m a t in D u b l i n : " S e s m a n i è r e s v u l g a i r e s , son p a r l e r r u d e , sa l o q u a c i t é f a t i g a n t e , son m a n q u e d e t a c t c o n t i n u e l le firent surn o m m e r le snob." I n 1857 G e o r g e s G u i f f r e y t r a n s l a t e d t h e Book of Snobs and seems t h e r e b y to h a v e given the w o r d its start in F r a n c e , a l t h o u g h its n e x t rec o r d e d o c c u r r e n c e (noted b y L i t t r é 2 2 ) c a m e ten y e a r s l a t e r : " C e sont ces reflexions qui m'ont fait décider de ne laisser publier qu'après m a mort m o n grand ouvrage: Introduction à l'histoire du s n o b b i s m e 2 3 parisien" ( H . de L a g a r d i e , J o u r n a l des D é b a t s , 12. m a i 1867). In t h e s a m e y e a r D e l v a u i n c l u d e s t h e w o r d s n o b in h i s Dictionnaire de la langue verte, giving as d e f i n i t i o n : " F a t , r i d i c u l e , v a n i t e u x , d a n s l ' a r g o t des gens d e lettres, q u i ont e m p r u n t é ce m o t a u L i v r e des S n o b s d e T h a c k e r a y , c o m m e si n o u s n ' a v i o n s p a s d é j à le m ê m e m o t sous u n e douz a i n e d e f o r m e s . " D e l v a u ' s o b j e c t i o n f a l l s with t h e i n a d e q u a c y of h i s definition. T h e s n o b , in T h a c k e r a y ' s t i m e as in o u r own, is or m a y b e all of these, " f a t , r i d i c u l e , v a n i t e u x " , b u t c e r t a i n l y n o n e of t h e s e words gives anyt h i n g l i k e a s a t i s f a c t o r y r e n d e r i n g of T h a c k e r a y ' s m e a n i n g . 2 0 T h e w o r d s n o b was relatively early taken over into F r e n c h and G e r m a n , and in the course of time has f o u n d a place in most of the other E u r o p e a n l a n g u a g e s . L i k e m a n y other b o r r o w e d w o r d s it has suffered the fate of b e i n g very often misunderstood and m i s u s e d , a n d in both F r a n c e and G e r m a n y as well as in other countries, has gradually taken on m e a n i n g s that have only a slight connection with the E n g l i s h sense but that are so well established in p o p u l a r u s a g e as to have a real c l a i m to b e i n g c o n s i d e r e d m o r e than m e r e m i s a p p l i c a t i o n s of the term. — At the very beginning I may point out that Fritz U s i n g e r , in his excellent study, Die französischen Bezeichnungen des Modehelden im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (1921) gives a few p a r a g r a p h s on the history of the word snob in F r a n c e to which I a m ind e b t e d f o r a n u m b e r of the e x a m p l e s of the word's occurrence q u o t e d below. U s i n g e r , h o w e v e r , as the title of his b o o k indicates, w a s interested in the word chiefly a s one of the designations f o r the b e a u or dandy — a m e a n i n g which the word did actually t a k e on at t i m e s in F r a n c e — and shows a tendency to o v e r e m p h a s i z e this side. Moreo v e r , since he w a s apparently not very well a c q u a i n t e d with the English m e a n i n g , h e s o m e t i m e s does not recognize it when it occurs in F r a n c e , so that our interpretations of the d e v e l o p m e n t w i l l b e f o u n d to differ in many points. 2 1 K r . N y r o p , G r a m m a i r e H i s t o r i q u e de la L a n g u e F r a n ç a i s e , C o p e n h a g e n , 1913, vol. I V , p. 74. 2 2 E. L i t t r é , Dictionnaire de la l a n g u e f r a n ç a i s e , t. 4, 1874. 2 3 T h i s s p e l l i n g — " s n o b b i s m e " — i s in the earlier p e r i o d f o u n d fairly f r e q u e n t l y a l o n g s i d e of the spelling " s n o b i s m e " , which was destined to receive the final de-

finite preference.

29

In 1875 Pierre Larousse (Grand Dictionnaire Universel du X I X e Siècle) defines snobisme as "Pose, affectation sotte, ridicule; hypocrisie vaniteuse", and gives a brief article on Thackeray's Book of Snobs. This definition too, was hardly calculated to give a really clear notion of the subject to the readers of the dictionary. The "hypocrisie vaniteuse" is explained by the article on Thackeray, where there is a certain confusion of snobbery with c a n t ; the Book of Snobs is called " l a monographie la plus complète et la plus ingénieuse du cant britannique". The ideas of p o s e and a f f e c t a t i o n are elements which are of some importance in the modified meaning of the term which we find later in France, but the vagueness of this definition makes it difficult to know whether Larousse is merely giving a personal interpretation of Thackeray's meaning or whether possibly he is being influenced by a specifically French usage. Taine, in his Histoire de la Littérature anglaise explanation of what the English mean by a snob:

(1875) gives a good

L e s n o b est u n e n f a n t d e s s o c i é t é s a r i s t o c r a t i q u e s . P e r c h é s u r s o n b a r r e a u d a n s l a g r a n d e é c h e l l e , il r e s p e c t e l ' h o m m e d u b a r r e a u s u p é r i e u r et m é p r i s e l ' h o m m e d u b a r r e a u i n f é r i e u r s a n s s ' i n f o r m e r d e ce q u ' i l s v a l e n t , u n i q u e m e n t e n r a i s o n d e l e u r p l a c e ; d u f o n d d u c o e u r il t r o u v e n a t u r e l de b a i s e r l e s b o t t e s d u p r e m i e r et d e d o n n e r d e s c o u p s d e p i e d a u s e c o n d . . . (t. V , p . 103.):

He adds, "Nous n'avons pas le mot, parce que nous n'avons pas la chose", a remark which has been vigorously contested by other French writers. Taine's definition may be worded rather drastically but it was of a nature to give a really concrete impression of the English idea of snobbery. It probably had rather little influence on actual French usage, however, since only students of English were likely to meet with it. In 1878 Littré gives the following definition: "Snobbisme. Mot anglais, signifiant l'état d'un homme qui admire platement des choses vulgaires." This is obviously a translation of one of Thackeray's definitions of the snob as the person "who meanly admires mean things 2 4 ". It is questionable whether this highly unspeeific definition, which Thackeray could make for English readers because most of them were thoroughly familiar with the popular use of the term, was likely to make the meaning of the word clear to the average French reader. The regular appearance of the word in contemporary dictionaries indicates that it must have been in fairly frequent use, but from the definitions given, most of which take Thackeray's Book of Snobs as authority and have, as is not surprising, certain difficulties in interpreting it, it is 2 4 A n a m u s i n g e x a m p l e of the p i t f a l l s a w a i t i n g the s t u d e n t of the c o m p l i c a t e d rel a t i o n s h i p s b e t w e e n the v a r i o u s m e a n i n g s of the w o r d s n o b is o f f e r e d b y the c u r i o u s s l i p m a d e b y N y r o p in h i s Grammaire historique de langue française. N y r o p e x p l a i n s what the w o r d m e a n t in T h a c k e r a y ' s t i m e a n d then cites the a b o v e d e f i n i t i o n f r o m L i t t r é , w h i c h as w e h a v e s e e n i s i n d u b i t a b l y a t r a n s l a t i o n of a d e f i n i t i o n b y T h a c k e r a y , with the r e m a r k : " C e t t e e x p l i c a t i o n n o u s m o n t r e q u e le m o t a été s e n s i b l e m e n t d é t o u r n é du s e n s q u e l u i p r ê t a i t T h a c k e r a y . " ( p . 74.)

30

h a r d to g a i n any i m p r e s s i o n of w h a t t h e a c t u a l u s a g e was. T h e r e is, however, as yet n o d e f i n i t e i n d i c a t i o n t h a t t h e F r e n c h u s e of t h e t e r m is d i v e r g i n g in any e s s e n t i a l s f r o m t h e E n g l i s h — unless t h e D e l v a u definition, " f a t , r i d i c u l e , v a n i t e u x " , c o u l d p e r h a p s b e i n t e r p r e t e d as indic a t i n g t h a t at t h i s e a r l y d a t e t h e w o r d was a l r e a d y b e i n g a s s o c i a t e d m o r e or less w i t h t h e f o p , t h e v a i n a n d r i d i c u l o u s m a n of f a s h i o n , as was to b e the case later. A r o u n d 1888 t h e w o r d b e g i n s to a p p e a r in t h e w o r k s of P a u l B o u r g e t , w h o w a s n o t e d f o r his A n g l i c i s m s . B o u r g e t uses t h e w o r d consistently in t h e E n g l i s h sense a n d is c r e d i t e d by G e o r g e s P e l l i s s i e r 2 5 w i t h a l a r g e s h a r e of t h e m e r i t of i n t r o d u c i n g t h e w o r d into F r e n c h u s a g e : P o u r q u o i M. P a u l B o u r g e t écrit-il snob en i t a l i q u e s ? J e lui a f f i r m e q u e snob s ' e m p l o i e c o u r a m m e n t . Il est trop m o d e s t e , ayant c o n t r i b u é p l u s q u e p e r s o n n e à i n t r o d u i r e le m o t dans notre langue . . . L u i - m ê m e n'a-t-il p a s été taxé de s n o b i s m e ? Et peut-être q u e l q u e s traits de l'Eau profonde m a r q u e n t encore la c o m p l a i s a n c e aux vanités m o n d a i n e s qu'on qualifie de ce nom.

U s i n g e r q u o t e s t h e f o l l o w i n g e x a m p l e s of B o u r g e t ' s u s e of t h e w o r d : " E t v o u s j o u e z , m a i n t e n a n t ? T o u t e s les élégances . . . " m e dit . . . R a y m o n d Casai. . . . I l eut, p o u r m e prononcer cette p h r a s e , un s o u r i r e d ' i n p e r c e p t i b l e ironie. J e sens bien q u ' i l m e considère un p e u c o m m e un de ces h o m m e s de lettre n i g a u d s q u i singent les h o m m e s du m o n d e . . . J e ne relevai donc p a s la légère m o q u e r i e de R a y m o n d , car il m ' a i m e avec cela, — en m e voyant un snobisme que je de l'amour moderne, 1888, p p . 364—65, 1903 c r o i s ne p l u s avoir. (Physiologie edition.) ( T h e financier N o r t i e r ' s wish to n o b l e m a n occasions the following tient-il donc à ce m a r r i a g e ? A snob . . . " (Un homme d'affaires,

b r i n g about the m a r r i a g e of his daughter with a c o m m e n t by an a c q u a i n t a n c e ) " P o u r q u o i Nortier cause de la présentation au c e r c l e ? Il est b i e n 1900, p. 71.)

W h e n B o u r g e t u s e s t h e word in o t h e r t h a n t h e direct sense h e a l w a y s m a k e s t h i s c l e a r by s o m e q u a l i f y i n g word. F o r i n s t a n c e , in L'Etape (1901) d e R u m e s n i l is a c c u s e d of b e c o m i n g a s o c i a l i s t " p a r s n o b i s m e intellectuel"2«. B e t w e e n 1895 a n d t h e e n d of t h e c e n t u r y t h e w o r d s e e m s to h a v e e n j o y e d a s u d d e n b u r s t of p u b l i c interest a n d o c c a s i o n e d a s m a l l flood of p u b l i c a t i o n s . I n 1895 F r a n ç o i s C o p p é e p u b l i s h e s an essay, Snobisme, in 1896 a n o v e l a p p e a r s by P i e r r e V é b e r , Chez les Snobs, in 1897 we h a v e a c o m e d y by G u s t a v e G u i c h e s , Snob, a n d a n essay b y F a g u e t , Snobs, a n d in province. 1898 a n o v e l b y H e n r y G r é v i l l e ( A l i c e D u r a n d ) , Villoré, snobs de Of t h i s g r o u p of writings, t h e essay b y F a g u e t a n d t h e G u i c h e s c o m e d y a r e closest to t h e E n g l i s h c o n c e p t i o n of s n o b b e r y . C u r i o u s l y e n o u g h , however, t h e F a g u e t e s s a y 2 7 was written p r e c i s e l y In a review of L'eau profonde, La Revue, 47, 1903, p. 754 ( U s i n g e r ) . 1911, O e u v r e s complètes, t. V I I , p. 83. 2 7 Propos littéraires, 4e Série, P a r i s , 1907 ( o r i g i n a l l y a p p e a r e d in L e s p o l i t i q u e s et littéraires, May 17, 1896). 25

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f o r the purpose of proving that the French had given the word a new meaning distinct f r o m the English one. Faguet cites Thackeray's Book of Snobs, by memory ( " m a u d i t e soit m a mémoire si elle m a n q u e de loyalisrn", p. 373), and appears, as other writers have remarked, to h a v e read little more than the first chapters of the book, as the only Thackerayan snob he seems to remember with any distinctness is the m a n who ate peas with his knife. Snob, en anglais, d e p u i s T h a c k e r a y , . . . veut d i r e i m b é c i l e , tout s i m p l e m e n t , o u plutôt niais, bêta, b a l o u r d . . . . L a classe à l a q u e l l e on appartient n'y f a i t rien. . . . E s t snob, d a n s T h a c k e r a y , tout h o m m e qui est ineptus en latin, o u gaffeur en j a r g o n français. . . . T o u t fâcheux ( r a s e u r en v u l g a i r e ) est snob p a r essence, ( p p . 373/74.)

Against this highly inadequate picture of Thackeray's snob h e then sets what he thinks of as the French snob : L e snob f r a n ç a i s est u n i q u e m e n t l ' h o m m e hypnotisé p a r les m a n i è r e s d u grand monde, ou mieux p a r l e s m a n i è r e s d ' u n m o n d e d o n t i l n ' e s t p a s , et q u i cherche à les imiter, ou qui m ê m e s i m p l e m e n t les a d m i r e trop. . . . Est snob celui qui, d a n s sa mise, dans sa tenue, dans son l a n g a g e , c o p i e le ton d'une classe s u p é r i e u r e à la sienne, (p. 375.)

As examples F a g u e t mentions among others the Bourgeois Gentilh o m m e of Molière, and Voltaire "toujours en son humiliation devant le duc de Richelieu", and for snobbery in other than worldly matters "l'apprenti littéraire qui porte de longs cheveux, parce qu'il a entendu dire que c'est la tenue en usage dans le monde artiste". What F a g u e t has done in his essay is to contrast the English conception, or one p a r t of it, which he mistakenly considers to be exclusively French, with an erroneous interpretation of Thackeray's meaning. T h e snob in Thackeray is something more than an imbecile and gaffeur. F a g u e t has not observed that the gaffeur is only called a snob by Thackeray when his clumsiness is in contrast lo liis pretensions. On the other hand it must be admitted that Faguet is not entirely wrong in contending that his definition is not really fully in accord with Thackeray's conception. T h e e x a m p l e of the man who ate peas with his k n i f e does show that what characterized the snob in Thackeray's day was not merely the fascination with the manners of a superior class but especially the contrast between the snob's pretensions and his own inability to live u p to them. Roger Alexandre ( Les mots qui restent, Paris, 1901) points out the faultiness of Faguet's way of understanding Thackeray and at the same time gives a clearer notion of the modifications the word snob was, as we shall see f r o m other examples, actually undergoing at the time. A l e x a n d r e seems to h a v e understood the essentials of the English idea of snobbery, explaining it as above all expressed in "vanité hautaine en haut de l'échelle sociale, bassesse et servilité sur les derniers degrés". E n p a s s a n t sur le continent, le mot snob nous p a r a i t avoir l é g è r e m e n t c h a n g é de signification. P o u r n o u s Français, il s'applique peut-être p l u s s p é c i a l e m e n t à l ' h o m m e q u i se rend esclave de la m o d e et de toutes les conventions d e l a vie factice. . . . Ce n'est q u ' u n e des variétés du snob des Anglais.

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M. Emile Faguet, dans une intéressante étude . . . a déjà indiqué ce changement de sens, mais il nous semble que, songeant surtout aux premiers chapitres de Thackeray, il en a beaucoup exagéré l'importance, (p. 175.) T h e c o m e d y " S n o b " , b y G u s t a v e G u i c h e s , g i v e s t h e s t o r y of a y o u n g w r i t e r , D a n g y , w h o is f a s c i n a t e d b y w o r l d l y s o c i e t y t o s u c h a n e x t e n t as t o endanger b o t h his work and his married life. T h e word snob occurs fairly o f t e n , a n d as a r u l e i n t h e E n g l i s h s e n s e : D a n g y . Mais c'est la beauté même, le charme, la distinction, la race ! J u i 11 a n . Une duchesse. D a n g y . Eh bien oui, une duchesse, parfaitement. Snobisme, n'est-ce pas? Vous autres, quand vous avez dit ce mot, vous croyez avoir tout dit. Moi je dis une sensation neuve. Il n'y a pas eu de duchesse dans mon existence et la première qui se présente . . . ! I n c e r t a i n o t h e r c a s e s t h e m e a n i n g is n o t q u i t e s o c l e a r : (Dangy defends his fashionable friends against his wife and his best friend, who accuse them of emptiness and absurdity) D a n g y . Qu'est-ce qu'ils vous ont fait, ces gens-là? . . . Ils représentent le monde, ou les mondes, si vous voulez. J u i l l a n . Le monde des grotesques, des parvenus, des snobs, des suiveurs de la mode D a n g y . De braves gens et très chics. Vous êtes extraordinaires, vous autres. Dès que quelqu'un est de tenue élégante, un peu outrée peut-être, tout de suite vous le qualifiez de snob. Vous ne distinguez même pas entre le snob et le gommeux. J u i l l a n . Allons donc, le gommeux, le grand gommeux, mais c'est un créateur. Il invente, tandis que le snob imite. (Déclamant.) Le gommeux lance la mode, le snob la ramasse . . . D a n g y . Mais leur rage d'imitation propage le bien aussi bien que le mal et les sentiments les plus élevés ont leur snobisme tout comme les instincts les plus crapuleux. (Act. I, Sc. X.) This passage illustrates the remarks m a d e b y Alexandre about the s p e c i a l s i d e s of s n o b b e r y e m p h a s i z e d i n F r e n c h u s a g e , e s p e c i a l l y as c o n cerns t h e s l a v e r y t o f a s h i o n . G u i c h e s ' m e n t i o n of t h e a s s o c i a t i o n of t h e s n o b w i t h t h e gommeux is a r e f e r e n c e t o a t e n d e n c y t h a t s e e m s t o h a v e b e e n r a t h e r w i d e s p r e a d . Gommeux is o n e of t h e i n n u m e r a b l e n a m e s g i v e n at d i f f e r e n t t i m e s t o the "jeune h o m m e à la mode", corresponding to the beau, the dandy, the m a c a r o n i etc. i n E n g l a n d . A c c o r d i n g t o L i t t r é t h e gommeux was the successor o f t h e muscadin, mirliflore, dandy, lion, gandin, petit crevé. In l a t e r u s a g e t h e w o r d t o o k o n a d i s t i n c t l y d e r o g a t o r y s e n s e ( P e t i t Larousse, 1 9 0 6 : " G o m m e u x . É l é g a n t r i d i c u l e " ) . T h i s u s e of t h e w o r d s n o b is w i t n e s s e d b y a n a r t i c l e i n t h e Grande Encyclopédie (c. 1 9 0 1 ) 2 8 d e f i n i n g snob as " d a n d y p r é t e n t i e u x e t v i d e " 28 Usinger (op. cit.) says 1885, but only the first volume of the Encyclopédie appeared at that date. The others appeared over a series of years and in the S volume certain quotations (see sub Socialism) dated 1901 indicate this as the earliest possible date.

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and explaining that the meaning of the word has been b r o a d e n e d in'Comparison to Thackeray's conception, being now applied to those persons " d o n t les préjugés et la sottise faussent le naturel et qui, p o u r avoir la satisfaction puérile de paraître ce qu'ils ne sont pas et de toujours être à la mode, s'infligent une pose ridicule". E m i l e G u é n a r d 2 9 , in 1905, raises an objection to the h a b i t of taking over f a s h i o n a b l e expressions f r o m E n g l a n d and contends that snob is adequately rendered by gommeux. It is not especially surprising that, after the French h a d learned to speak of " l e s f a s h i o n a b l e s " and "les d a n d y s " , they tended to look on this new importation f r o m E n g l a n d as applying to much the s a m e sort of t h i n g 3 0 . Most of these terms for the f o p and the f a s h i o n a b l e exquisite alternate between an admirative and a disparaging sense and it seems that the word snob used in this connection usually h a d the pejorative implications. T h e r e seems too to have been a rather widespread tendency to m a k e a distinction between the successful dandy types, real dictators of fashion, and the merely imitative character of the snob, as in the passage quoted f r o m the Guiches comedy. (See also passage f r o m J . Boulenger below.) If now we return to the already mentioned group of writings devoted to the snob in the last five years of the century, we find that Coppée, Véber and, to a lesser extent, Henry Gréville deal with snobisme in literary and aesthetic fields. T h e essay by Coppé, " S n o b s " , written in 1895 and thus the first of this series, is a satire on the intellectual f a d s and follies of fin-de-siècle Paris. It begins with a protest against an unbecoming k i n d of Botticellian coiffure lately adopted^ by the Parisienne : Cet accès de botticellisme . . . est un signe des temps, c o m m e diraient les gens graves. Il c o r r e s p o n d a un état d'esprit, a u j o u r d ' h u i assez r é p a n d u , et q u i est en train d e p e r v e r t i r un grand n o m b r e d e n o s contemporains. A tout p r i x on ne veut p a s être c o n f o n d u avec un Philistin. . . . L e m o i n d r e b o u r g e o i s prétend d é s o r m a i s au titre d e dilettante. M a i s , c o m m e il n'a p a s , en ces m a t i è r e s difficiles, d e goût s p é c i a l , de p r é f é r e n c e p e r s o n n e l l e , il accepte avec o b é i s s a n c e le dernier c a p r i c e d e la m o d e , il r é p o n d p a s s i v e m e n t à l'appel du dernier cri, il s ' e m b a r q u e , s a n s d i r e 'ouf', sur le dernier b a t e a u . B i e n vite, le p l u s o r d i n a i r e m e n t , la m o d e change, le cri s'éteint, l e b a t e a u fait n a u f r a g e . Q u ' i m p o r t e ! L e f a u x artiste, le snob, en est quitte p o u r changer d'avis, p o u r d e m a n d e r le n o u v e a u m o t d'ordre et se c o n f o r m e r à l a consigne la p l u s récente. . . . Ce q u e désire avant tout le snob, c'est q u ' o n l e r e m a r q u e à l'avant-garde. (pp. 256/58.)

Coppée's snob is enamoured, in turn, of Burne-Jones and the most eccentric painters of the day, of the crude and naturalistic in literature P r e f a c e to Le patois de Courtisols, p. 4 ( U s i n g e r ) . I n q u i r i e s a m o n g f o r e i g n f r i e n d s of m i n e h a v e revealed that in other countries too, i n c l u d i n g such widely s e p a r a t e d o n e s a s P o r t u g a l and S w e d e n , the p o p u l a r conception of the s n o b i s that of the d a n d i f i e d p e r s o n . P r e t e n t i o u s elegance or eccentricity of clothing c o u p l e d u s u a l l y with conceit and i m p e r t i n e n c e of m a n n e r w e r e the typical characteristics cited. ( S e e also the chapter on G e r m a n usage.) 29

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and then of the mystical and mysterious, is a radical Wagnerian, and above all looks for genius exclusively in foreign countries — "En très peu de temps, il a eu successivement l'âme russe, l'âme belge, l'âme Scandinave" — in French literature he only admires a few of the more extravagant symbolists or once in a while one of the classics in whom he has discovered, some hitherto unsuspected subtlety. In politics "il était, hier, anarchiste, mais c'était plutôt par peur". It is hard to decide whether Coppée is here making a transferred use of the word, with conscious originality, or is merely illustrating a conception of the snob that had already established itself in French usage. The types he describes could in English very well be termed art snobs or intellectual snobs, but if Coppée is similarly applying the word by analogy he does not make it clear what parallel he is thinking of. Is he comparing these intellectual faddists with the snob Faguet describes, the person imitating the manners of a superior class — the remark "Le moindre bourgeois prétend désormais au titre de dilettante" could be understood in this sense — or is he perhaps transferring the idea of the gommeux or dandy from the realm of mundane fashions to that of intellectual fashions? Whatever the case may be in this special instance, the association of snobisme with a certain attitude in aesthetic and intellectual matters was destined to be very important in that part of French usage that differs from English usage. The novel by Véber, Chez les Snobs, which was published in the next year (1896), describes much the same kind of snobisme as Coppée's essay, and unless one looks on it as directly inspired by Coppée would seem to support the supposition that the word was beginning to be associated by preference with certain forms of pseudo-aestheticism. Véber's book opens with a sort of essay on snobisme, including the following attempt at definition: On peut dire que les Snobs sont ceux qui, en tout, portent la dernière 'dernière mode', la mode que l'on ne suit plus parce qu'elle est trop exagérée; mais c'est insuffisant; ce sont aussi, vous dira-t-on, les gens qui veulent tout comprendre ou, chose bien différente, paraître tout comprendre; ce n'est pas encore suffisant; ce 6ont le9 "chercheurs d'inédit' peut-être, a moins qu'ils ne soient les 'suiveurs d'inédit'. Ce sont ceux qui n'estiment que le rare et le précieux, et tombent ainsi dans l'extravagant; ce sont aussi les crédules qui se prennent à toute affectation d'étrangeté et de cosmopolitisme. Mais ce n'est pas encore cela et il y a de tout cela! C'est un état d'âme assez nouveau, indéfinissable, pour lequel il a fallu un nouveau mot: les Snobs sont les Snobs, voilà! (pp. 9/10.)

At another point the snob is called the "bourgeois gentilhomme de l'esthétique". The snobs described by Véber are rich and idle people who, either to subdue their boredom or to efface the memory of the too-recent connection of their wealth with things commercial, have plunged into all the fads of the period, from Ibsen and the Pre-Raphaelites to theosophy and "soul affinities" ("unions spirituelles"). Véber belittles their pretensions to anything like real originality or discernment, but grants them 35

an enormous influence: " L e s Snobs? Tout le monde s'en m o q u e et tout le monde les révère; et vous n'imaginez pas quelle force a le sieur M i c h e l " (the m a i n snob of the story, a somewhat dandified aesthete with doubtful ways of gaining a living) " q u i donne le ton aux Maissène qui donnent le ton à toute une société falotte, crédule, jalouse, mais nombreuse et remuante, q u i donne en définitive le ton à toute la F r a n c e " ( p p . 26/7). I n the novel Villoré, Snobs de Province, the last of this group, it is practically impossible to decide quite what is meant by the word snob. T h e r e is a great deal of satire on pseudo-aestheticism, and a n u m b e r of figures in the book are provincial replicas of the snobs pictured by Véber and Coppée, but at t h e same time there are a number of figures who are snobbish in the English sense. No indication is given as to which of the characters are to b e considered the snobs de province, except that the word is once a p p l i e d to the heroine, Antoinette. Antoinette is a young lady of inpeccable birth and upbringing, who longs to escape f r o m the prosaicness of provincial life. She refuses the proposal of marriage m a d e b y Villoré, her father's neighbour, on the grounds that h e does not share her tastes f o r m o d e r n music and decadent poetry and that he would not b e willing to leave his large country properties to take her to P a r i s where she thinks she could m a k e herself a place in the most brilliant circles of intellectual and social life. Villoré replies: V o u s êtes u n e c h a r m a n t e petite snob, capable d e f a i r e m ê m e u n e sottise p o u r agir a u t r e m e n t q u e l e s autres — au b e s o i n , p a r f o i s , p o u r i m i t e r les autres — car i l y a p l u s i e u r s v a r i é t é s de snobs, et v o u s avez l ' â m e c o m p l e x e , v o u s imiteriez d ' a u t r e s m o i n s intelligentes, moins fines, (p. 11.)

F r o m this it would seem that the sense given to the word here fits rather better into the Véber-Coppée line of development than into the English conception — in Véber, for instance, one of the women characters diagnosed her own snobbery as growing out of the " c r a i n t e de paraître b a n a l e " , a rather similar notion to the one expressed here. I n 1901 the Dictionnaire Complet (ed. Pierre L a r o u s s e ) defines snobisme as follows: P o s e , affectation, r i d i c u l e , sotte, qui p o r t e à p e n s e r , à agir p a r infatuation, par engouement.

This curious definition is apparently an attempt to do justice to the idea of f a d d i s m with which snobisme was being associated, as in Véber and Coppée. T h e Petit Larousse, in 1907, defines snobisme as " a d m i r a t i o n factice et sotte p o u r tout ce qui est en vogue", without indicating whether intellectual or worldly fashions are thought of. Usinger cites the use of the word by J a c q u e s Boulenger in Sous LouisPhilippe: Les Dandys, 1907, as an application of the term to the b e a u or "Modeheld" p u r e and simple. He seems to h a v e overlooked certain passages where the E n g l i s h meaning comes out very clearly, as in the following: 36

Il (le comte d'Orsay) présidait, entouré de tous les dandies de Londres, d'une foule de gentlemen, d'écrivains, d'artistes, d'acteurs même (il n'a jamais été sottement snob) . . . (edition of 1932, p. 90.) Le club, à son origine, était ouvert à tous les amateurs de chevaux, car les gens 'nés', étant plus sûr de leur naissance, étaient alors moins snobs qu'aujourd'hui, (p. 168.) T h e passage q u o t e d b y U s i n g e r is, i t is true, l e s s c l e a r : Notre Beau respecta donc les convenances, mais il les respecta avec une exagération paradoxale; loin de cacher son snobisme, il en fît un système. Toutes ces choses généralement considérées comme frivoles: les toilettes, les manières, les relations, il affecta hautement de les regarder comme les plus importantes et de les mettre bien au-dessus de l'intelligence, de l'esprit, du talent es des qualités morales. Savoir se vêtir et porter ses habits, saluer quelques personnes qui sont à la mode, ignorer les autres, être rencontré seulement là où il est élégant d'aller et en bonne compagnie, p a r a î t r e enfin, c'est la seule occupation d'un snob, mais il n'ose l'avouer. Brummell proclama que c'était un art auquel on pouvait consacrer sa vie. Avec lui, le snobisme cessa d'être honteux; il s'en orna; il le vanta. C'est justement à cause de cela qu'il cessa de l'être. Il n'imita plus: il innova, au contraire; loin d'obéir a la mode, il la commanda. Et ce snobisme conscient, voulu, outré, qui se dépasse lui-même et devient comme un sentiment nouveau, c'est le dandysme, (p. 19.) H e r e w e are r e m i n d e d of t h e d i s t i n c t i o n m a d e i n t h e G u i c h e s c o m e d y b e t w e e n t h e snob and t h e grand g o m m e u x — "le g o m m e u x lance la mode, l e s n o b la ramasse". B o u l e n g e r ' s c o n c e p t i o n of t h e s n o b s e e m s t h u s t o b e a p p r o x i m a t e l y t h e s a m e as t h e E n g l i s h i d e a b u t c o l o u r e d r a t h e r s t r o n g l y b y t h e F r e n c h a s s o c i a t i o n of snobisme with the weakness for the fashion. U n l i k e Coppée and Véber, however, h e does not bring in the preoccupation with intellectual and aesthetic fashions. I n a n a r t i c l e b y C l a u d e d ' H a b l o v i l l e , "Le Snobisme" in the Revue Générale de Bruxelles ( J u n e 1914) w e find an e x a m p l e of t h e w a y i n w h i c h t h e F r e n c h a n d t h e E n g l i s h c o n c e p t i o n s are s o m e t i m e s set s i d e b y s i d e w i t h o u t b e i n g f e l t as i n c o n s i s t e n t w i t h e a c h o t h e r . D ' H a b l o v i l l e s h o w s i n general a rather remarkable eclecticism in his definitions and seems to h a v e a c c e p t e d all t h e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s h e f o u n d w i t h o u t b e i n g v e r y c r i t i c a l as to t h e i r c o n g r u i t y 3 1 . T h e d e f i n i t i o n d ' H a b l o v i l l e s u b m i t s is as f o l l o w s : Le snobisme est l'admiration factice, sotte et basse de ce qui est en vogue, la recherche exagérée du geste ou de la chose rares, le désir de se hausser dans l'opinion des autres ou l'exaspération de l'élégance, (p. 802.) T h e first p a r t is s u b s t a n t i a l l y t h e d e f i n i t i o n w e h a v e f o u n d i n t h e Petit Larousse, which m a y be said to sum u p the most general tendency of t h e s e p a r a t e F r e n c h d e v e l o p m e n t , t h e s e c o n d t e r m r e m i n d s o f V é b e r ' s 31 He unfortunately perpetuates Faguet's somewhat one-sided idea of Thackeray's conception of the snob: " S n o b voulait dire à cette époque, niais, balourd, g a f f e u r , pour employer son meilleur synonyme. Le snob de Thackeray manque de tact et ne discerne pas les nuances, adresse la parole aux gens sans présentation préalable, mange les petits pois avec son couteau et marche sur les traînes des robes dans les salons." (p. 801.)

37

"chercheurs d'inédit", and the " e x a s p é r a t i o n d'élégance" represents the tendency to confuse the snob with the dandy, which comes out still more clearly later when d'Habloville, obviously having read the Grande Encyclopédie, speaks of the snob as " u n e sorte de dandy prétentieux et v i d e " (p. 807). So f a r the b a l a n c e is all for the French tradition but d'Habloville also cites the clear and unmistakable explanation of the English sense given by T a i n e (see above p. 30) and cites as snobs " V o l t a i r e par son agenouillement devant le roi de Prusse, B a l z a c par sa hantise d'aristocratiques amours". D'Habloville's article is a little sermon on the f a d s and follies of the fashionable world, all of which he characterizes as snobisme. Among them the weakness for rank and wealth naturally plays a considerable rôle, but not, as in the English conception of snobbery, the predominant rôle. H e gives the intellectual and aesthetic kind of snobisme considerable attention, and gives the snob credit for sometimes being an unconscious tool in cultural progress: " S ' i l s se sont souvent trompés et si on les a quelquefois mystifiés — ils ont imposé trois maîtres au X I X e siècle: Wagner en musique, Monet en peinture, B a u d e l a i r e en poésie . . . " but adds, " A part ces rares occasions d'être utiles, l'innombrable troupeau des snobs piétine l'herbe du monde au détriment de l'élite véritable". I n sharp contrast to the very b r o a d application d'Habloville gives to the word snob is the strictness with which Marcel Proust uses the English meaning throughout his writings. H e even gives it a more limited application than is usual in most English usage in that by snobisme he means exclusively the susceptibility to the fascination exerted by the aristocracy; the snobbery of wealth and breeding unconnected with the nobility he does not mention. T h e earliest examples of his treatment of the subject are to be f o u n d in Pastiches et Mélanges, " S n o b s " , " C o n t r e une s n o b " , " A une s n o b " ( p p . 75—79). I n A la recherche du temps perdu the word recurs incessantly and is applied, in accordance with modern English usage, not only to the bourgeois fascinated by aristocratic circles, as Legrandin and Bloch, but also to the members of the grand monde themselves, to the B a r o n de Charlus, because of his extreme exclusiveness in choosing his relations, and to the Duchesse de Guermantes because there was an "entrée de f a v e u r " in her salon for certain " a l t e s s e s " whose pedigrees were more brilliant than their wit. T h e r e is just one occurrence of the dandy m e a n i n g : " c e grand j e u n e h o m m e blond qui est tellement snob, il a toujours une fleur à la boutonnière, une raie dans le dos, des paletots c l a i r s " (Swann, II, p. 42). It is Odette, the former cocotte, who is speaking, and it m a y be that Proust here is showing his gift for linguistic observation: the circles in which Odette h a d moved were notable both for their liking for Anglicisms and for their inaccuracy in using them, and they were also the circles in which the various slang expressions for the dandy (already a rather démodé type) would b e likely to flourish. Proust liked to discover these little habits of expression that distin38

guish one milieu from another in any society, and he comments on various peculiarities of vocabulary that were only to be found " d u côte de Guermantes" — in the Faubourg St. Germain. His own strictness in the use of the word snob suggests that these exclusive groups in Paris society, with which he so early came into contact, may have been distinguished from other, more literary or less fashionable, groups by a certain orthodoxy in applying the English meaning of the word. The many ties, both of relationship and of friendship, existing between the Faubourg St. Germain and English aristocratic circles would easily account for this, if the conjecture is correct. It is rather instructive to glance at the use of the word snob made by some of the various critics of Marcel Proust. Since Proust deals with the English conception, it is natural that most of the writings about him adopt this meaning too, but the occurrences of the other ways of using the word are all the more interesting when they do appear. Pierre Quint, who has devoted most of his literary life to the study of Proust, uses the English sense 3 2 , as do also the Comte de L u p p é 3 3 and the Princesse Bibesco 3 4 , who defends him against the charge of being himself snobbishly worldly. Another of his critics, however, Paul Lasserre, accuses him of a kind of snobisme that is only to be understood from the separate French development: (With r e f e r e n c e to P r o u s t ' s s u p p o s e d imitation of Sterne's style of h u m o u r ) " C e qui l e r a p p r o c h e r a i t d e Sterne, ce n e serait p a s tant une c o m m u n a u t é v i v a n t e d ' i n s p i r a t i o n q u ' u n certain m a n i é r i s m e imitateur. C'est ce q u ' o n a p p e l l e vulgairement u n s n o b i s m e . M. M a r c e l P r o u s t est le s n o b de l ' h u m o u r . Et c o m m e il est en m ê m e t e m p s le snob de l'analyse p s y c h o l o g i q u e hyperraffinée, telle q u ' e l l e fleurissait v e r s 1890, ainsi q u e le snob de l ' i m p r e s s i o n n i s m e descriptif à tout prop o s , sans p a r l e r du botticellisme ou p r é r a p h a é l i t i s m e e m p r e i n t au titre de son livre, la conjonction de tous ces s n o b i s m e s , fort é l o i g n é s d e sa vraie nature, ont fait de lui l'écrivain le p l u s e m p e s é de son t e m p s . " (Marcel Proust et ses critiques, in Les Contemporains, P a r i s , 1926 — originally in La Revue Universelle, 1919.)

Similarly, André Gide seems to be more in the separate French tradition when he writes, as an apology for the fact that when he was acting as reader for the Nouvelle Revue Française he had rejected Proust's novel, that he had thought him "du côté de chez Verdurin; un snob, un mondain amateur" 3 5 . Purely incidental occurrences of the word, such as these, are more useful in revealing the shades of meaning that are being given it than longer discussions of the subject, as in Coppée and Véber, where one can never be sure where the word's primary meaning ends and the transferred use begins. The fact that Proust's great novel, in which so much space is devoted to the study of snobbery in the English sense of the term, has become Marcel Proust, P a r i s , 1925, S e e p p . 62, 175 etc. "Chez Marcel Proust, Snobs et Mondains", L e C o r r e s p o n d a n t , 25 Mars, 1928. 34 Au bal avec Marcel Proust, P a r i s 1928. S e e p p . 160, 170, a n d p a s s i m . 3 5 "Some S t u d i e s on M a r c e l P r o u s t " , R o m a n i c R e v i e w , N e w Y o r k , Oct./Nov. 1929, p. 360. 32

33

39

something of a classic ought to act as a barrier against the further spread of the specifically French ways of conceiving of the snob. Modern examples of orthodox usage might be cited to support this presumption, as for instance the Éloge du snobisme by Marcel Boulenger (1926), A Snobville Plage by Robert de Flers 3 6 , and passages in Le Diplómate by Jules Cambon 3 7 and in Province by Jules Romains 3 8 . On the other hand, a very clear formulation of the French conception, or rather of one of the French conceptions, as well as evidence for the fact that this idea of the snob has been accepted in other Latin countries, is to be found in the Spanish Enciclopedia Espasa (Bilbao, 1927). The essential concurrence of the conception of snobbery described in this article with the one we have found in many French writers justifies its inclusion here, as does also the fact that the writer professes to be describing the use of the word in all Latin languages, not merely in Spanish. The following excerpts give the main points of the article: Snobismo, esnobismo: Anglicismo adoptado en todas las lenguas neolatinas para indicar las cualidades y las costumbres de ciertas gentes que pretenden singularizarse y que se singularizan por sus gustos y extravagancias, sobre todo entre las classes altas ó distinguidas de la sociedad. Se ha calificado al snob . . . de persona vacua y ligera, que se entusiasma con todo lo nuevo aunque carezca de mérito. La definición es a nuestro entender justa pera insuficiente. El snobismo es en realidad la admiración incondicional que puede ser ó no justificada, de todo lo que está de moda. Más aún es el prurito de imponer una moda no adoptada todavía. Y aun puede llamarse snobismo el puro afán de singularizarse, oponiéndose precisamente a lo que está de moda. Si en algún tiempo il calificativo de snob podía parecer un insulto, por cuanto sólo se atribuía a los fatuos y necios, se ha dilatado tanto la acepción de esta palabra, que ha podido llegar á ser, si no elogio, cuando menos un epíteto 6Ín malicia.

The English sense of the word is given with unusual clarity, but is treated as a thing of the past: En su primitiva acepción, aplicábase á la gente vulgar que aspiraba á la nobleza ó á la distinción . . . (here the Bourgeois gentilhomme is cited as an example) ó á toda persona que aprecia mucho más en sus semejantes la requeza ó la posicion social que el carácter ó las condiciones morales.

As examples of present-day forms of snobbery the encyclopedia points to those adherents of such modern aesthetic movements as cubism and surrealism who are motivated merely "por oposicion á lo vulgar ó convencional, por la vanitad de contradecir las ideas y las fórmulas estéticas establecidas". The two figures in modern literature given as the most typical snobs are Des Esseintes of Huysmans' "A Rebours" (the extravagant aesthete and superdandy) and Marcel Proust's Swann (the connoisseur par excellence). The writer, who apparently cannot escape a slight sense of malaise at the fact that, as he must have noticed, Proust himself does not 36 37 38

40

In Les Annales Politiques et Littéraires, July 22, 1923. Paris, 1926, p. 15/16. Paris, 1934, p. 136.

use the word in this sense (Proust had for one thing expressly said that Swann was not a snob) adds: L a mayoría de los personajes de este último autor están tocados de snobismo, y no precisamente de snobismo estético, como el protagonista de la mencionada novela de Huysmans, sino de snobismo social ó mundano, en el que la originalidad se convierte en extravagancia ó manía y la fatuidad en misantropía y orgullo.

This rather far-fetched explanation of what Proust means by snobisme is apparently based on the figure of the Baron de Charlus, in whom snobbery takes on extravagant and almost pathological forms. This article has the great merit of giving, at last, an accurate version of the English meaning and of setting beside it a clear formulation of the most important tendency shown by the non-English development. The fact that the writer apparently takes it for granted that the English word has followed the same line of development does not materially detract from this merit. S u m m a r y . The history of the word snob in France and the other Latin countries, so far as they have been considered in this survey, presents a number of conflicting tendencies. 1. On the one hand there has always been a certain number of writers faithful to the English usage. These may be divided roughly into two groups; representing a) the strict usage, as in Bourget, Proust, Marcel Boulenger (Éloge du Snobisme); b) a looser usage, as in d'Habloville. Snobisme is thought of as the whole complex of worldly follies, among which the respect for social position has an important but not the primary place. The critic of Bourget cited above who defines snobbery as the "complaisance aux vanités mondaines" (Pelissier) belongs to this group, as well as Jacques Boulenger (Sous Louis-Philippe). 2. In fairly well-defined but usually unconscious opposition to these groups are the independents, who have developed a usage which has tended to become more and more distinct from the typical English usage. There are several different currents in this movement but they can roughly be summed up in the tendency to identify snobbery with the infatuation with what is fashionable. This general classification can also be divided into two main sub-groups, comprising a) those who confuse the snob with the fashionable hero, the gommeux or the dandy, as Guénard, Grande Encyclopedic. Here the devotion to the fashionable is found in its primary, non-intellectual form. This tendency in its outspoken form seems to have died out in the last two decades, but its effects are probably still to be seen colouring the looser conception of snobbism described under lb. b) those who picture the snob as a kind of shallow or affected intellectual or aesthete. There are several degrees in this conception, ranging 41

from the simple " m o n d a i n a m a t e u r " of Gide, to the heights of pseudo intellectual aristocratism in a figure like des Esseintes. T h i s type is usually explained in F r a n c e as infatuated with the fashion, here of course with the intellectual mode, b u t is, as the article in E s p a s a observes, often m a r k e d by an alleged scorn for all that is in fashion. P e o p l e with this sort of mentality are sometimes in E n g l a n d called intellectual or aesthetic snobs, or p e r h a p s " c u l t u r e snobs", but it would seem that the French application of the term snob to such types is not a conscious transferrai of meaning of this sort but the giving of a new content to the word itself. T h e article f r o m the Enciclopedia Espasa, for example, shows clearly that the aesthetic k i n d of snob is thought of as the primary kind. III.

Germany.

I n Germany we find a development curiously similar to that in France. Here as in F r a n c e the word was undoubtedly first introduced by the agency of Thackeray's Book of Snobs. L a d e n d o r f 3 9 finds the word for the first time in a review of the Snob Papers in the Stuttgarter Morgenblatt (p. 157 ff.) in 1848: " T h a c k e r a y findet . . . in Palästen und Hütten, zu Wasser u n d zu L a n d e seine Snobs." As early as 1856 t h e word has m a d e headway enough to be included in the B r o c k h a u s L e x i k o n 4 0 : " S n o b (engl.) Einer, der den feinen Herrn spielt, ohne das Talent u n d die Mittel dazu." T h i s is a reasonably accurate rendering of the older English conception. P i e r e r 4 1 , in 1863, brings the same definition and f r o m this time the word a p p e a r s regularly in the various editions of the chief German lexicons, with only slight variations in definition. Meyer, in 1889 4 2 , brings the derivative, " S n o b i s m " for the first t i m e ; Pierer spells it " S n o b b i s m " in 1892, Brockhaus gives " S n o b i s m ( u s ) " in 1903. Snobismus is the preferred spelling at the present day but the vacillation between one and two b's has not ceased, as m a y be seen f r o m the title of the most recent study of the subject in Germany, Behmenburg's " D e r Snobbismus bei W. M. Thackeray" (1933). Meyer's 1889 edition brought a further novelty by altering the usual definition to " h o h l e r , vornehmtuender Geck". " G e c k " is approximately English " d a n d y " but with a stronger derogatory colouring. Whether this new element c a m e f r o m an actual change in the use of the word in Germany, or f r o m a misunderstanding of its English sense and a desire to vary the definitions the G e r m a n lexicons h a d been for some time borrowing f r o m each other with only slight variations, or possibly from the French, where, as we have seen, t h e same element played a part, is difficult to determine. A t any rate, the element " G e e k " was taken over by most Germ a n dictionaries at this period (cf. Pierer, 1892, "Geck, der den feinen 39 40 41 42

42

Historisches Schlagwörterbuch, Straßburg und Berlin, 1906. Kleines Brockhaus'sches Conversationslexikon, Leipzig, 1856. Pierers Universal-Lexikon, 4. Aufl., Altenburg, 1863. Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 4. Aufl., Leipzig, 1889.

Herrn spielt", Brockhaus, 1903 and 1923, "vornehmtuender Geck"; Herder, 1907, "vornehmtuender Geck"). Meyer's 1907 edition shows the influence of Flügel's analysis of the older English usage (see above, p. 12): "Snob — (engl.) ungebildeter, vornehmes Wesen nachäffender und dabei anmaßend auftretender Mensch". This return to an English meaning, even if an old-fashioned one, would seem to indicate that the identification of the snob with the "Geek", which Meyer had been the first to introduce, had not been so much an attempt to do justice to actual German usage as a misunderstanding of the English word. Finally, in 1934, the Brockhaus brings a definition that for the first time gives a really clear impression of the essentials of the modern English conception (in its conservative forin, however): "Snob (engl.) eine Person mit übertriebener Hochachtung vor Vornehmheit und Reichtum, die sich den Anschein einer höheren gesellschaftlichen Stellung zu geben sucht, als ihr nach Herkunft und Mittel zukommt." The series of definitions given above are quoted from the big lexicons (Brockhaus, Meyer, Pierer, Herder). Aside from the association of the snob with the "Geek", which is being abandoned in the newest editions, they throw very little light on actual German usage, in so far as it differs from English usage. Some of the smaller and more specialized dictionaries offer more of interest. Otto Ladendorf, in his "Historisches Schlagwörterbuch" (1906), describes the older English sense of the word, with examples of its occurrence in German writings, and then says: "Jetzt versteht man darunter insbesondere den Sklaven der Mode und der gesellschaftlichen Konvention." This is very likely an adaptation of the definition given in Alexandre's Les mots qui restent: "l'esclave de la mode et de toutes les conventions de la vie factice", as Ladendorff refers the reader to this book at the end of his article. It is interesting, however, to find that Ladendorff considers this French definition, with its emphasis on la mode, also applicable to the German use of the word. Eduard Engel 43 , in 1918, gives a whole series of suggested translations which are rather instructive as regards the associations the word was acquiring. He suggests "Vornehmtuer, -heitsäffer, Dabeiseinmüsser, Schmock, Gigerl, (Viennese for fop, dandy), Ästhet". Here we have both the association with the dandy and, by the inclusion of "Ästhet", the indication that the French tendency to emphasize a kind of aesthetic snobbery was also making itself felt. Knaurs Konversationslexikon, finally, gives in its 1934 edition the following definition: "Snob (engl.) Bezeichnung für einen Menschen, der kritiklos Wertungen des Tages sich zu eigen macht, auch Äußerlichkeiten überschätzt." Of the definitions we have quoted, this one comes closest to actual modern usage in Germany, by its indication that the predominant 43

Entwelschungswörterbuch, 1918.

43

conception refers to a kind of intellectual attitude rather than a social one, but it can hardly b e said to give a very adequate or specific description of the mental attitude concerned. T h e final part of the definition is worded broadly enough to include, at a pinch, the English sense of the word and thus obviates the necessity of a declaration on the question of the existence of a separate German development. T h e German d i c t i o n a r i e s then, do not help us very much in trying to find out just how and when the new elements came into the G e r m a n conception of the snob. When we turn to the actual occurrences of t h e word in literature or in political and sociological writings, we find somewhat more, although hardly complete, enlightenment. T h e earliest a p p e a r a n c e of the word discovered by Ladendorff (after the review of the Book of Snobs mentioned above) is in Nordau's Die conventionellen Lügen der Kulturmenschheit ii (1883). N o r d a u knows the word in the sense of the upstart and sycophant: speaking of newlyf o u n d e d dynasties, he asks " o b diese neuen K ö n i g e auch durch die G n a d e Gottes solche geworden sind oder ob sie mit dieser G n a d e nur flunkern, o b sie, Snobs auf dem Throne, sich einer hohen Beziehung rühmen, die sie nicht b e s i t z e n ? " (p. 93), and traces snobbery back to the "HerdentierInstinkt der Unterwürfigkeit unter das L e i t t i e r " — " D e r Snobismus ist anthropologisch begründet und das hat Thackeray vergessen, als er mit bitterm H a s s e gegen denselben zu F e l d e zog. D i e Loyalität, in dem Sinne, wie die Monarchisten dieses Wort verstehen, ist aber der höchste und vollendetste Ausdruck des S n o b i s m u s " (p. 109 f.). A transferred use of the word is found by Ladendorff in an essay by L u d w i g B a m b e r g e r in 1 8 9 2 4 5 : " D i e Vulgarisation des Genialitätsanspruchs ist eines der amüsantesten Phänomene der Gegenwart. . . . Was immer den K i t z e l des Genie-Snobbisms in seinem heiligen Innern fühlt, Männlein u n d Weiblein, drängt sich h e r a n . " Bamberger's connections with French culture m a k e one consider the possibility of his here being influenced by such conceptions of snobbism as Coppee's and Veber's, but "geniuss n o b b e r y " in this sense is a transferral of meaning that could also easily h a v e been m a d e by an Englishman at this period. I n 1900 we find the English meaning of the word in an article by E d . Heyck, " D a s U r b i l d des Snobs", in which Petronius' classic upstart, Trimalchio, is set u p as the ancester of the snob. I n this s a m e year, however, we find something l i k e a declaration of independence for a G e r m a n conception of the snob in an article in the " K ö l n i s c h e Z e i t u n g " of March 13th. A f t e r a very good analysis of just what the English m e a n by a snob, differing f r o m the usual foreign discussions of the matter in that it is obviously b a s e d on real acquaintance with English usage and not merely on an interpretation of the Book of Snobs, the writer declares that such types are very seldom to b e met with in Germany, p e r h a p s because Ger44 46

44

Leipzig, 1884. Ludwig Bamberger, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 1, Berlin, 1898, p. 39S.

m a n y has never h a d such a brilliant and p o w e r f u l nobility as E n g l a n d , but t h a t the corresponding G e r m a n weakness is the adoration of education, culture, " B i l d u n g " . H e sketches the various types of G e r m a n snobs: "Literarische Snobs, die im grünsten Alter, in ihren Schriften wenigstens, mit allem fertig sind", "naturwissenschaftliche Snobs, die, nachdem sie k a u m einige Collegia gehört, das Halbverstandene aus kurzem G e d ä r m halbverd a u t wiedergeben", "Nietzsche-Snobs, die ihrer gemeinen Verbrechernatur den imponierenden Philosophenmantel u m h ä n g e n " etc. Thackeray's fam o u s definition of snobbery " T h e mean admiration of m e a n t h i n g s " is, he points out, only half applicable to the G e r m a n snob since the G e r m a n snob can a d m i r e in a ridiculous way things that in themselves are good. T h i s article called forth energetic protest f r o m H e r m a n Dunger in t h e Zeitschrift des Allgemeinen Deutschen Sprachvereins46. D u n g e r complains t h a t this conception of the German snob is not a very clear one and that the only sure thing about it is that it is totally different f r o m the English conception. H e quotes the author's own admission that Germany is not a good soil for the English snob-germ and asks: " A b e r wenn d e m so ist, so d ü r f e n wir wohl mit einer gewissen Berechtigung f r a g e n : w a r u m gebraucht er dann das e n g l i s c h e Wort f ü r diesen B e g r i f f ? wie k o m m t er dazu, eine nach seiner eigenen Darstellung e c h t d e u t s c h e Erscheinung m i t einem Fremdwort zu bezeichnen, und noch dazu mit einem Ausdruck, der einen wesentlich anderen Sinn h a t ! " T h e question does indeed seem to have a certain justification. T h e answer is p r o b a b l y that the writer in the " K ö l n i s c h e Zeitung" was not so much following his own f r e e fancy in painting these types of German snobs as reacting to a tendency that was already m a k i n g itself felt in the l a n g u a g e and that can either b e traced back to French influence (the five years before the turn of the century h a d m a r k e d the peak of the similar development in F r a n c e ) or else to the beginning of an astonishingly p a r a l l e l separate development in Germany. T h e Dunger article suggests that the word snob was not in very common use at this period and was not very clearly understood. Its opening lines a r e : "Wissen Sie, was ein Snob ist? Sollten S i e es noch nicht wissen — und nach den Erfahrungen, die ich bei einer Anzahl sprachkundiger F r e u n d e gemacht habe, fürchte ich, daß Sie damit nicht allein stehen — " etc. T h i s state of affairs was of course favourable to changes in the sense of the word, since they would meet with less resistance. A n article on Thackeray in the "Dresdner Nachrichten", J u l y 19, 1911, contains the r e m a r k : " H e u t e ist der B e g r i f f " (Snobismus) " m e h r ins Ästhetische gewendet". Apparently then very much the s a m e thing was happening to the word in Germany as at a somewhat earlier period in F r a n c e . T h e English meaning still persists, however, usually in the sense of the climber or parvenu. In Zwischen den Rassen (1907), by Heinrich Mann, for instance: —- the hero is showing his castle and explains that it only *> XV. Jahrgang, 1900, Nr. 12.

45

recently c a m e into the family. "Wir sind j ü n g e r ; wir sind keine Feudalen. Unser einziger K a r d i n a l war nur ein Snob. Wir sind Florentiner B ü r g e r und d u r c h F e l l h a n d e l reich g e w o r d e n 4 7 . " A n d in 1914 Sternheim produced his comedy Der Snob, depicting the phenomenal career of a man who rises f r o m the depths of Kleinbürgertum into a position of such wealth and power that he marries a countess and is accepted and even f e a r e d by the highest circles of German pre-war nobility — once more the climber, the upstart. T h e progress, however, that the other conception of snob h a d been m a k i n g is shown by the fact that Sternheim was called to task for using the word falsely. Willi H a n d l , in his review of the p l a y 4 8 , condescendingly r e m a r k s : " D i e falsche Anwendung des Wortes (Snob) tut der Sache keinen A b b r u c h . " Another writer, J u l i u s B a b , was stimulated by Sternheim's comedy to write an article on " S n o b i s m u s 4 9 " , half review, half essay, considering the more general aspects of the subject. Although B a b makes no protest against Sternheim's use of the word, one gains the impression that h e is not thinking of the same kind of snob as Sternheim. H e writes, " D e r S n o b ist durchaus ein Entwurzelter, er handelt nicht m e h r nach Trieben, Bedürfnissen, Leidenschaften, sondern nur nach Zwecken, Absichten, Eitelkeiten, da i h m niemals Wert oder Unwert einer Sache, sondern nur ihre modische Geltung interessiert, und er somit eine K r e a t u r ohne Selbstgefühl, ohne Halt, ohne alle Orientierung in der Welt ist." These remarks could of course b e applied to the English conception of snobbism, if taken in a rather wide sense, but the emphasis on "modische G e l t u n g " coupled with the fact that as an e x a m p l e of the p e a k of " S n o b i s m u s " , the writer cites the attitude of the p u b l i c toward Wedekind's plays, which it h a d hissed off the stage ten years before and was now madly a p p l a u d i n g merely because Wedekind had become fashionable, suggest that the p o p u l a r acceptation, of which H a n d l was p r o b a b l y thinking when he objected to Sternheim's application of the term, is m o r e the " S k l a v e der M o d e " , to which Ladendorff had referred in 1907. T h a t B a b does not sense any inconsistency between the two conceptions is to b e explained by the fact that Sternheim's p l a y is not so much concerned with real snobbishness, as understood in England, as with the figure of the parvenu as such, with the newcomer in society, among whose experiences the initiation into the fashionable attitudes toward cultural matters naturally plays a role. During the World War, which rather naturally brought to Germany a new interest in the less f a v o u r a b l e sides of English character, we find two articles on E n g l a n d in which the word snob is used in the orthodox sense. Curt de B r a , in 1915, utilizes his article "Wert und Wesen von Thackerays S n o b s b u c h 5 0 " for a sharp attack on British snobbery and cant, 47 48 49 50

46

Gesammelte Romane und Novellen, 7. Bd., Leipzig (no date), p. 355. Schaubühne, 1914, Nr. 23/24. Gegenwart, 1914, Nr. 7. Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, VII. Jahrg., Heft 5, 6; Mai, Juni 1915.

and in an article by Samuel Saenger 5 1 written in 1917 the word is also used in the English sense. Both of these writers, however, give evidence of special knowledge of English literature and affairs and are thus hardly to be taken as representative of German usage. In 1928 there appeared an article on the snob by Franz Werf el: "Der Snobismus als geistige Weltmacht 5 2 ". T h e article interests us here only to the extent that it throws light on the use of the word snob in Germany. To a person only accustomed to the English use of the term it could appear to be merely an ingenious exercise in the transferred use of the word, a study of various kinds of intellectual, aesthetic and moral or amoral snobberies. Werfel begins with the more harmless varieties of literary and aesthetic snobs, the writers who are purposely incomprehensible and the artists who indulge in the cult of the new at any price or of the startling for its own sake, and then paints various kinds of political snobs, poseurs of communism side by side with dilettantish reactionaries, and ends by a long description of what he considers the most important expression of collective " S n o b i s m u s " in modern life, the "Defaitismus der M o r a l " pervading so much of the intellectual world. This tendency he divides into two parts: " N a c h rechts blickt das gepflegte Antlitz des aristokratischen Dandytums, wie es etwa durch die Namen von Oscar Wilde und d'Annunzio versinnbildlicht wird. Nach links kokettiert das leidende Wuschelhaupt der anarchistischen Antibürgerlichkeit, alles was unter den Begriff des Kaffeehauses und der Boheme fällt." As examples he mentions the modern "Verehrung des Verbrechens", "das Dirnenideal", "der Morphium- und Kokainsnobismus", and the various forms of the "Snobismus der Perversität". These anti-moral snobs are a new form of the intellectual snob, but the other types mentioned by Werfel are familiar to us from the French discussion of the subject — even the political snobs (cf. Coppée) — and all of them fit the definition given by the Enciclopedia Espasa. But they also could, as said before, be called snobs in a transferred application of the English sense, and Werfel makes a parallel between these snobs and the bourgeois-gentilhomme type of the upstart snob and even refers to the supposed origin of the word from "sine nobili' täte". On the surface, then, the essay has the appearance of being merely a broadening of the English conception. B u t read from the English point of view the essay is at times rather obscure. One does not quite understand, for instance, Werfel's insistence on the morbidness of snobbism, on the "Satanic shadow" he finds on the faces of so many snobs, and the like. The obscurity disappears, however, when one begins to realize that Werfel is not starting out from the common English meaning of the word and drawing parallels in the intellectual sphere, as an English writer would do, but that his starting point is a fairly well-defined conception of a certain intellectual attitude, a special type of unhealthy intellectual insincerity, 61 62

Neue Rundschau, Bd. 28, Heft 3, p. 398 ff. Jahrbuch des Paul Zsolnay Verlages, 1928.

47

and that the parallel he makes with the social upstart is more of an artificial matter, probably growing out of his investigations as to the origin of the word. T h i s interpretation of Werfel's essay is supported by the evident surprise Werf el feels at the connection between the snob and the u p s t a r t : " D e r Plebejer, der die höhere Klasse zu erobern t r ä u m t ! Dies die Urformel des Snobismus ! " he exclaims. Other modern examples of the German use of the word snob will m a k e clearer the conception f r o m which Werfel is starting out. In a discussion of the religious film by Walter Dirks (1931) we find the word given a strictly aesthetic application: M a n denkt sofort an zwei G e f a h r e n , an die des K i t s c h e s (cheapness, artistic worthlessness) und die des S n o b i s m u s . W i r h a b e n es in anderen K u n s t zweigen o f t g e n u g erlebt, d a ß d a s R e l i g i ö s e m o d e r n u n d gesellschaftsfähig w u r d e , a b e r d a n n sofort der G e f a h r d e s S n o b i s m u s verfiel. . . . A l l e s m ö g l i c h e ist so angefaßt w o r d e n , von ägyptischer religiöser K u n s t bis zu zeitgenössischen katholischen A b t e i e n . N u n sind zwar die echten r e l i g i ö s e n Werte b e s t ä n d i g e r als d i e L a u n e n ihrer gelegentlichen snobistischen V e r e h r e r , u n d j e n e A b t e i e n h a b e n ihre M o d e k o n j u n k t u r gut ü b e r s t a n d e n und s i n d heute w i e d e r ungestört, a b e r b e i m F i l m geht es u m d i e P r o d u k t i o n selbst. K ö n n e n d i e f ü h r e n d e n F i l m r e g i s s e u r e a n d e r s a l s in snobistischer V e r z e r r u n g religiös s e i n ? ( E r b e und Aufgabe, Frankf u r t a. M., 1931, p. 108.)

E l s e H o p p e ( L i e b e und Gestalt; der Typus des Mannes in der Dichtung der Frau, H a m b u r g 1934) describes a kind of snob that is practically identical with the dandy, but with the intellectualized and aestheticized dandy of the fin de siècle, as conceived by Oscar Wilde or Baudelaire. S h e is describing the type of man preferred by women writers of the impressionistic period in German literature: E r stellt sich d a r a l s Snob, wenn m a n sein Wesen mit e i n e m W o r t zu bezeichnen versucht. E r ist d e r M a n n v o n Welt, elegant, gepflegt, schön. R a s s e m e n s c h , a b e r m i t deutlichen M e r k m a l e n d e r Degeneration. I m m e r ist er v o n G e s c h m a c k , sehr h ö f l i c h u n d sehr w o h l e r z o g e n ; aber es ist nur die Distanz, d i e seinen Beziehungen zu d e n M i t m e n s c h e n Chancen gibt. . . . U n l u s t i g sind seine T a g e , schwer sein A m ü s e m e n t , m e l a n c h o l i s c h sein Leichtsinn. . . .Dieser m e l a n c h o l i s c h e D a n d y , der S k l a v e der L a n g e w e i l e des fin de siècle, ist i m G r u n d e d e r s e l b e Menschentypus w i e d i e F r a u , d i e ihn liebt. . . . Statt des tüchtigen B ü r g e r s , dessen e i n d e u t i g u n k o m p l i z i e r t e A r t einen langweilte, w u r d e der S n o b g e w o r d e n e A r i s t o k r a t aufgesucht, d e s s e n ästhetisch reizvolle H a l t u n g nur m ü h s a m innere L e e r e v e r b a r g und Mattigkeit offen eingestand, (pp. 221, 222, 228. )

Lest one b e tempted to j u m p to the conclusion that the ordinary English sense of the word has been completely routed, however, the year 1934 also brought a book in which the word a p p e a r s a number of times in the English sense — Annette Kolb's Die Schaukel (passim). F r a u K o l b , who is half French, has a very cosmopolitan culture and, to j u d g e f r o m her books, seems to have h a d rather close contact with things English, so that her use of the word is in itself not especially significant as f a r as German usage is concerned. Anyone who has the opportunity of making inquiries among Germans today may convince himself without difficulty that the usual German con48

ceptionof the snob is indeed different from the English one 5 3 . Alongside of the English sense of the word, which is employed chiefly by people who are in especially close touch with English literature or life, one meets with both of the tendencies we have found in France, the one associating the snob with the beau or dandy, marked by ostentatious elegance or eccentricity in clothing, and the other, much more frequent, identifying Snobismus with a certain attitude toward intellectual or aesthetic matters. This latter conception is by far the most important one in modern German usage. The German asked to describe a snob will usually draw a picture of the kind of person who might in English best be described as a combination of the "high-brow", the aesthete and the "sophisticate". The element of sophistication is important: the German snob is decidedly more the worldly than the bohemian type of intellectual and is usually pictured as rather blase, skeptical, satiated. The descriptions naturally vary somewhat from individual to individual, but these variations appear to be only questions of degree or of personal interpretation; the numerous points of concurrence in the different versions show that it is indubitably a question of a single conception. At its most extreme development this conception of the snob tends to become that of an intellectual exquisite practically identical with the figure of the intellectual or aesthetic dandy as pictured by the later theorists of "dandyism 5 4 ". From this it might seem to follow that the German conception of the intellectual snob is merely a transferred application of the man-of-fashion meaning. This may have been the case as far as the historical development is concerned — the identification with the fashionable exquisite may have originally led to the conception of the aesthetic and intellectual snob — but at the present day one can find many Germans who speak of the intellectual kind of snob without any association with the dandy proper at all or — nota bene — with the English sense of the word either. Whatever may have been the case in the past, this use of the word seems now not to be a consciously transferred application. Furthermore, in its less extreme forms this kind of "Snobismus" cannot be said to be really identical with intellectual dandyism. What characterizes the German snob is the affectation of an excessive subtlety of taste, which is part, but only a part, of what marks the intellectual dandy in the full sense of the term. We could, for instance, hardly substitute the word Dandysmus for Snobismus in the quotation from Walter Dirks given above. There is a current witticism about a certain well-known German cultural organization that admirably illustrates the German use of the word snob. This society is noted for the high level of its intellectual aims, and evil tongues, probably belonging to those who have been excluded from 53 I am writing this study in Germany, the remarks made here are based on personal observation. 5 4 See e. g. Barbey d'Aurevilly, Gustav Koehler, Otto Mann.

49

membership, would have it that the club's motto is "Snöbe aller Länder vereinigt e u c h ! " (Snobs of the world, unite! — the special flavour given by the facetiously irregular plural Snöbe is unfortunately not translatable). Here the snob is apparently thought of as the high-brow and nothing more, for the members of this society, a dignified and serious association, are certainly not to be accused of the extravagances associated with the idea of the real intellectual dandy, any more than of being especially snobbish in the English sense of the word. T h e similarity of this German conception of the snob to the French snob as pictured by Coppée, Véber and others, and especially to the description given in the Enciclopedia Espasa, is striking. Véber's phrase "chercheurs d'inédit", d'Habloville's mention of the "recherche du geste ou de la chose rares", could be directly applied to the German snob, and the Enciclopedia Espasa s choice of Des Esseintes, the aesthete and dandy, as the typical exponent of modern snobbism illustrates what we have said above about the closeness of this conception to that of the intellectual dandy. The remark that the accusation of snobbism has ceased to be an insult and may be made almost without malice also corresponds to the German conception. There can hardly be any doubt that this parallelism is more than a matter of mere chance, but it would be hard to say whether it has been France that has influenced Germany or the other way about. The earlier date of the first French discussions of aesthetic and intellectual snobisme would, however, give some weight to the assumption that this tendency began in France. *

*

*

That the word snob should have undergone some changes in meaning on leaving England is by no means surprising. In the first place, Thackeray's Book of Snobs, which was the first agent for propagating the word m Europe, was hardly written in such a way as to give people a really concrete idea of what a snob was. As we have seen, Thackeray plays with the word, uses it figuratively and by analogy a dozen times for once that the primary sense is meant. Even his contemporaries in England quarrelled with the broadness of his applications of the term, and it is small wonder if his French and German readers received a very vague notion of what the word meant. Apparently, though, the word itself appealed to them "parce qu'il est joli comme son, dans son impertinence monosyllabique", as Faguet says. What was more natural than that the word, connected as it was with a kind of social pretence, should be associated with the various types of the fashionable beau then in vogue? The word in England was after all sometimes applied to the pretender to elegance, as is testified by the Punch cartoon about the "small swell". As time went on, furthermore, the fact that in England the word was undergoing changes of meaning, as we have seen, would mean that the task of keeping in fiarmony with English usage had become doubly hard. 50

T h e transition from the dandy-snob to the conception of the aesthetic snob did not involve a very large step, since the dandy, even if in comparatively primitive form, shows aesthetic leanings by his striving for perfection of attire. This step was probably all the easier because at the period when, in France at least, the word snob became especially popular, the wave of fin-de-siecle aestheticism had permeated the whole of society, and keeping in fashion was practically synonymous with keeping up with the latest aesthetic fads. In post-war days the greater ease of cultural communications might be thought to bring a swing to the English sense of the word. This does indeed seem to a certain extent to be the case in France. If it has not been so in Germany, the explanation probably lies in the fact that in England in very modern days the application of the word in a transferred sense to various intellectual attitudes has become more frequent than in the earlier period, and this tendency has the effect of making the difference in sense less apparent. It is conceivable that the modern popularity of the idea of aesthetic and intellectual snobbery in England reflects a certain influence of the continental use of the word. This conjecture is appealing, although it is of course not really necessary as an explanation of a very natural enlargement of the term's application. The fact that in English usage this tendency makes itself felt relatively late is probably chiefly due to the fact that as long as social snobbery was really a burning issue in England the word retained associations with the elementary facts of domination and subserviency, with real sycophancy and arrogance, for which parallels in aesthetic or literary fields are not easy to find; it is only when snobbery as such becomes something to be taken rather lightly, because no longer of very great importance, that its similarity to the related but less odious attitudes in other fields becomes apparent. That in France and Germany the separate development we have described were able to take place side by side with the English use of the term, is probably to be explained by the fact that in both countries it was only in the rarest cases that the full flavour of the English sense, with its associations with arrogance and servility, was taken over. Nordau in Germany and Taine in France have caught something of the full force of the English conception, but the other writers who used the English sense usually have only one side of it, either the idea of the parvenu in a rather neutral sense, merely taken as the newcomer in society, as in Heinrich Mann, or of the mere infatuation with the manners of another sphere, as in Faguet, or of the preoccupation with all the various frivolities of social life, as in so many French writers.

51

Chapter W I L L I A M

I.

M A K E P E A C E

I. B i o g r a p h i c a l

T H A C K E R A Y . Notes.

In studying a writer's attitude toward snobbery, it can be useful to refresh one's memory about the facts of his life, in so f a r as they might be thought to have h a d an influence on his way of l o o k i n g at the general social problems of his day. Such facts are, in particular, t h e writer's own position in the social scale, the extent of his experience in different social environments, and his personal attitude toward the social problems arising in his own life. In the scope of this study, these b i o g r a p h i c a l data can and need only be b r i e f l y indicated. Naturally, in reviewing them, we must guard ourselves against t h e temptation of drawing oversimplified conclusions — as has been done in Thackeray's case, f o r instance, w h e n his w h o l e criticism of the snobbery and complacency of the society of his day has been explained as his reaction to a few snubs supposedly received by h i m as a young m a n 5 5 — and against the f u r t h e r temptation of interpreting as insincerity every little human discrepancy between a man's personal l i f e and his expressed convictions. It could almost be set u p as a rule that an author w h o writes much about snobbery must b e prepared to face the accusation of being himself a snob. B o t h M e r e d i t h and Proust h a v e suffered the charge, as will be seen, and the especially uncompromising nature of T h a c k e r a y ' s attack on snobbery made it inevitable that he should be observed much more critically on this point t h a n the ordinary mortal. N o attempt w i l l be made in the present study to express a categorical a f f i r m a t i v e or negative on this question, involving, as it does, so m a n y subjective elements, but some consideration of it, and a presentation of the evidence f o r and against the presumption in the different cases, can hardly b e omitted. W . M. T h a c k e r a y was well-suited by his f a m i l y ' s position in the w o r l d and by his own experiences to take a broad and o b j e c t i v e view of society and social problems. B y birth, fortune and education a gentleman in the worldly sense of the w o r d , he was not handicapped, l i k e Dickens, in portraying the u p p e r half of society, nor was his objectivity h a m p e r e d by any personal self-consciousness about his social position, such as Meredith, the son of a small tradesman, had to overcome, w h i l e at the same time t h e ex6 5 Cf. for example E. Schaub W. M. Thackeray's ( B a s e l 1902), last chapter.

52

Entwicklung

zum

Schriftsteller,

periences of his life were many-sided enough to give him some understanding of life as presented to the less fortunate half of the world. The Thackerays were an able and fairly prosperous family. Some of them had held positions of considerable dignity in England, and the migration of the novelist's grandfather to India was the occasion of a rapid advance in the family's fortunes. When Thackeray, fatherless, came to England as a child of five, he was enabled to receive a "gentleman's education", at the Charterhouse School and then at Cambridge, where he did not bestir himself to take a degree. After leaving the university he made the conventional European tour. The expectation of a comfortable patrimony permitted him to take his studies for the law, his first choice of a career, without undue exertion or anxiety for the future. After coming of age, however, he promptly lost the greater part of this fortune, through unlucky speculations and some reckless association with predatory card-players. The sudden urgent necessity for earning his living, which led him, after a vigorous but short-lived attempt to become a painter, to magazine writing (the law he had definitely abandoned), was not only of value in giving him the push without which he might never have become more than a dilettante in literature, but also in giving him the glimpses of Bohemia and Grub Street and of the seamier sides of existence that a purely sheltered life would have deprived him of, to the detriment of his later broad canvasses of English life. Thackeray had remarkable luck as a magazine writer and later as a novelist, as far as financial returns were concerned. Even in the fifteen years before the period of his great novels he succeeded in earning a comfortable income, and if he somewhat over-worked himself up to the very last, it was not through pressure of real want but because, although he genuinely liked Bohemia when it was his fate to be a part of it, he also very much liked luxury. As his biographer Melville remarks, it is vain to waste pity on him, as some have done, for taking "too many crops out of his brain", as Thackeray himself put it, to provide himself and his with luxuries, when simpler tastes would have permitted him a much less strenuous rate of production. But Thackeray's love for the good things of this world was not permitted to interfere with the more imperious desires of the heart — his marriage was one of the kind the world calls imprudent, but seems to have been, up to the tragic illness of his wife, undividedly happy. It was only in his later years, when he had become something of a lion, that certain of his old admirers thought they found him changed, worldly, forgetful of old friends. The impression was apparently widely spread that Thackeray was "spoiled" 56 . Harriet Martineau flatly accuses him of having turned snob: 6 6 In a letter to Samuel Laurence written shortly after Thackeray's death, Edward Fitzgerald, his friend of long standing, writes: "I have been told — by you, for one — that he was spoiled. I am glad therefore that I have scarce seen him since he was 'old Thackeray'." (Melville, p. 65.)

53

M r . T h a c k e r a y has said m o r e , and m o r e effectively, about s n o b s and s n o b b i s m than any other man, and yet his frittered life and his o b e d i e n c e to the call of the great, are the o b s e r v e d of all observers. As it is so it must b e : but ' 0 the pity of it, the pity of i t ! ' Great and unusual allowance is to b e m a d e in his case, I am a w a r e ; but this does not lessen the concern occasioned by the spectacle of one after another of the aristocracy of nature m a k i n g the K o t o to the aristocracy of accident. ( M e l v i l l e , p. 266.)

Against remarks of this sort Thackeray's biographers are able to cite numbers of other statements, from people who knew him at the time of his prosperity, praising his simplicity, his lack of affectation and presumption, his capacity for warm affection. It does not demand an unduly charitable point of view to suspect that a certain amount of misconception may have entered into these charges. A man with Thackeray's reputation, who was as likeable and entertaining in company as he is reported to have been, may well have been flooded by invitations from brilliant houses, without having had to kotow for them, and a man who liked fine food and good company, as Thackeray's books sufficiently reveal he did, would have had to be very stiff-necked to refuse invitations from hostesses with excellent cooks and with guests chosen from the best of wit and breeding in London, and certainly need not necessarily have accepted them merely because of the coronet on his hosts' carriage. The ill interpretation put on Thackeray's social successes may in some cases have been fed by a certain amount of envy. Thackeray himself knew that conspicuous success often gains a man more enemies than friends. In a paper of his on Friendship there is a passage that has been taken as his reply to the charge of tufthunting: T o k n o w y o u n g n o b l e m e n and brilliant and notorious town-bucks and l e a d e r s of f a s h i o n , has this d i s a d v a n t a g e : that if you talk a b o u t them or are seen with them m u c h , you offend all your f r i e n d s of middle-life. It m a k e s m e n envious to see their a c q u a i n t a n c e s better off than they themselves are.

(Mr. Brown on

Friendship.)

That this piece of psychological observation was not just an ad hoc construction is seen by the fact that in the Snob Papers, written when Thackeray was still comparatively unknown and hence hardly thinking of a personal application, he makes a very similar observation. In the sarcastic paper on Literary Snobs he writes: T h o s e who k n o w u s (literary m e n ) know what an affectionate and brotherly spirit there is a m o n g us. S o m e t i m e s one of us rises in the w o r l d : we never attack him or sneer at h i m under those circumstances, but rejoice to a m a n at his success. If J o n e s dines with a lord, Smith never says J o n e s is a courtier and a cringer. ( B o o k of S n o b s , p. 331.)

The known high-mindedness of some of the people who thought that Thackeray had become snobbish precludes our taking envy as the sole explanation of the charges against him, but even in these cases it is easy to see how perfectly harmless actions of his could, in all honesty, be misinterpreted, once the rumour was started. In a letter to his relative, Mrs. 54

Baynes, Thackeray refers to having h e a r d t h a t h e is supposed to have become haughty and supercilious to old acquaintances and attributes the r u m o u r to a misunderstanding. This opinion once put forth against a man, all his friends believe it, accommodate themselves to the new theory, see coolness where none is meant. They won't allow for the t i m e an immensely enlarged acquaintance occupies, and fancy I am dangling after lords and fine people because I am not so much in their drawingrooms as in former days. Since I began this work (lecturing), besides travelling, reading, seeing people, dining — when I am forced out and long to be quiet — I write at the rate of five thousand letters a year. I have a heap before me now — six of them are about lectures — one from an old gentleman whom I met on the railroad and who sends me his fugitive poems. I must read them, answer, and compliment the old gentleman. Another from a poor widow, in bad spelling, asking for help. Nobody knows the work until he is in it; and of course, with all this, old friends hint you are changed, you are forsaking us for great people, and so forth, and so forth. (Merivale and Marzials: Thackeray, p. 150.)

As an example of a case where h e himself h a d m a d e the same k i n d of m i s j u d g m e n t of a f r i e n d and h a d very honestly acknowledged and regretted it, h e could have quoted a passage t h a t we find in his diary, written when h e was only twenty years o l d : Butler and Curzon dined with nie at the Bedford. Curzon is the same noble little fellow he was at school, with all his old enthusiasm and no humbug. When I supposed him grown cool, it was I that was conceited, and not he; meeting Curzon again has made me very happy. (Quoted by Mrs. Ritchie, Preface to volume 5, Works, Biographical Edition, 1911.)

T h e question of w h e t h e r or not Thackeray's h e a d was really t u r n e d by success is one t h a t can h a r d l y h e decided at this late date, when his own contemporaries were of divided opinion. T h e r e is no objective test f o r snobbery, and even Thackeray's best f r i e n d could not have got into his head and decided w h e t h e r h e had accepted a given invitation out of mere vanity or because he genuinely liked t h e company. Better t h a n f r o m all biographies we know Thackeray f r o m his books, and in those books t h e r e radiates such a spirit of t r u e good will, of honest self-respect, and of selfcriticism too, t h a t it seems certain t h a t the more serious of t h e reproaches m a d e against h i m must be misjudgments. I t seems out of t h e question t h a t h e ever forgot his innate dignity enough to angle for notice f r o m t h e socially great or to let himself be treated patronizingly, much less that h e t u r n e d f r o m his old friends because they were less prosperous and less aristocratic t h a n some of his newer ones. That, on t h e other h a n d , h e may have been a trifle dazzled and flattered by the attention paid to h i m by t h e bigwigs of Mayfair, t h a t he m a y at times have been more impressed by t h e pedigrees of some of his new admirers t h a n h e himself realized, is very possible and not so very heinous, especially f r o m t h e m a n whose books show such an understanding f o r t h e mixed n a t u r e of all humanity.

55

1.Snobbery

in T h a c k e r a y ' s Book

of

writings

previous

to

the

Snobs.

The Cambridge

"Snob".

When, in 1846, Thackeray began writing the Snob p a p e r s for Punch, the subject of snobbery was by no means a new field for him. His writings before this date present a multitude of snob types, although they are seldom labelled as such. I n spite of the promising title, however, we look in vain in the Cambridge "Snob", Thackeray's first field of literary action, f o r snobs in anything but the Cambridge sense of townspeople. Thackeray's contributions are of only slight interest and consist in some humorous verses and a few sketches of supposed Cambridge villagers, which probably entertained the students of those days by references to local events that are lost on modern readers. When Werner Behmenburg asserts that the Book of Snobs is the continuation and enlargement of the main ideas to b e found in Thackeray's contributions to the Cambridge " S n o b " 5 7 , we are forced to conclude that, the papers from the Cambridge "Snob" being h a r d to procure in Germany, he is drawing largely on his imagination. T h e most zealous search for pertinent passages in the papers attributed to Thacker a y 5 8 discloses only one or two touches that have some slight hint of themes later appearing in the Book of Snobs. In the burlesque poem Genevieve one m a y p e r h a p s see a forerunner of Thackeray's later strictures on " s n o b b i s h m a r r i a g e s " , although certainly in no very original form. Say do Thy Oh no! And

I seek, my Genevieve! charms alone to win? for thou art fifty-five, uglier than sin! (etc.)

Since then I thus refuse my love For songs or charms to give, What could my tardy passion move? Thy money, Genevieve!

A Literary Snob.

And in "Mrs. Ramsbottom in C a m b r i d g e " (No. 7, May 21, 1829) there is a tinge of snobbish boasting in the lady's references to her connections in society. " D e a r Sir, I was surprised to see my name in M*. Bull's paper, for I give you my word I have not written a syllabub to him since I came to reside here, that 6 7 " E r hatte sich schon während seiner Universitätsjahre in Cambridge mit dem Problem des Snobs beschäftigt und eigens dazu die Zeitschrift 'Snob' im Jahre 1829 gegründet, deren Hauptideen später im 'Punch' des Jahrgangs 1845/46 in den Snobpapers wiederkehrten oder fortgeführt wurden und später gesammelt im Book of Snobs erschienen." (Behmenburg, op. cit., p. 8.) A further inaccuracy in this passage is the statement that Thackeray was the founder of the " S n o b " — according to Melville its founder was W. G. Lettsom, and Thackeray merely a collaborator. 5 8 Collected by Lewis Melville and printed in his Stray Papers by William Makepeace Thackeray, London, 1901.

56

I might enjoy the satiety of the literary and learned world. I have the honour of knowing many extinguished persons. I am on terms of the greatest contumacy with the Court of Aldermen, who first recommended your weakly dromedary to my notice, knowing that I myself was a great literati."

Thackeray's other contributions are "Our Snob's Birth", a skit obviously inspired by Tristram Shandy, some verses chaffing the college musical club, a humorous account of the supposed murder of the editor, a burlesque election announcement, etc., none of which can by any stretch of the imagination be brought into connection with the problem of snobbery. The rest of Thackeray's early work which is of interest for our topic — and nearly all of it is — may be conveniently divided into four groups, covering (1.) his contributions to the literature of roguery, (2.) his studies of parvenus, (3.) his studies in the "shabby genteel" and (4.) his studies of "respectable snobs", as he himself later calls them. Snobs

and

Rogues.

The snob plays several different roles in Thackeray's studies of roguery. Since most of his rogues are "Hochstaplers" of one variety or another — i. e. "society crooks", adventurers and swindlers whose technique consists in dressing fashionably and pretending to high social relations (which may also be genuine, but made use of for shady ends) — the snob appears the most frequently as the dupe who makes such careers possible. But the Hochstapler himself is also sometimes shown as a snob, in whom the pretensions to social importance are doubly motivated, by the hope of gain and by the desire to play a part in high society for his personal satisfaction, while in other cases snobbery is used merely as the motive for other crimes having in themselves no special connection with it. The Professor, a short sketch published in Bentley's Magazine in 1837, is the first of Thackeray's stories of rogues and contains likewise his first, rather primitive, portrait of a snob. Professor Dandolo, the hero-villain of the story, is a dancing-master at a girl's school, who succeeds by his Byronic airs in gaining the hearts of all the. girl pupils and especially of Adeliza Grampus, the daughter of a rich oystermonger and alderman. She is not deterred by his cockney accent from building up a romantic vision of him as a nobleman in disguise, a flattering illusion that the Professor gladly encourages, feeding it by stories of his "noble Italian family" crushed by the "Prussian autograph", until his fatal appetite for huge quantities of oysters and other sea-food, for which he is unable to pay, leads to the painful discovery in the Grampus shop that the man is a swindler. The story is rather crude, and is only worthy of note because of the portrait of Adeliza as the credulous, novel-fed schoolgirl snob. Here the snob is the gull, while the rogue in the story does not himself show any special signs of snobbery. He does not even have to invent the story of his noble origins, since Adeliza's own 57

imagination supplied him with it, and there is no indication by Thackeray that in accepting it and embroidering on it Professor D a n d o l o was moved by anything more than the h o p e of getting a rich wife. In this same year (1837), Thackeray began the p a p e r s on Yellowplush, the humorous f o o t m a n whose adventures and eccentric spelling were to entertain the readers of Fraser's Magazine for some time to come. T h e first paper, Fashnable Fax and Polite Annygoats (i. e. Fashionable F a c t s and Polite Anecdotes), has, unlike the following numbers, nothing to do with roguery, but brings two other themes to which Thackeray was often to return: mockery of the genteel literature of the day, and snobbery below stairs. It is a burlesque review of My Book, or, The Anatomy of Conduct, a naive production from the pen of J o h n Henry Skelton, whom Melville describes as " a half-demented West-end linen-draper, who h a d conceived the idea that it was his mission in l i f e to instruct the world in the canons of etiquette". Mr. Yellowplush considers himself well qualified to give a j u d g m e n t on this "reglar, slap-up, no-mistake, out-an-out account of the manners and usitches of genteel society", for, to use his own words, " I have lived with some of the first families in E u r o p e , and I say it, without f e a r of contradiction, that, since the death of George the IV . . . there doesn't, praps, live a more genlmnly man than m y s e l f " . Skelton was easy game, and the article, which is amusing enough, is chiefly significant f o r its introduction of Thackeray's much-used device of holding u p the satiric mirror to good society by showing it its i m a g e in the society of the servants' hall. T h e continuation of Mr. Yellowplush's writings, in the Amours of Mr. Deuceace, brings further contributions to the literature of roguery. In the first story we meet the snob again as dupe, in the person of the harmless Dawkins. Yellowplush's new master, the Honorable Algernon Percy Deuceace, is a younger son of the E a r l of Crabs, and having expensive tastes and little income, is forced to m a k e his way by his wits and by his skill in card-playing. Yellowplush, who is rather proud of his master's connections with the " a r i s t o x x y " , gives us an account in full of his debts, amounting to some fifteen thousand pounds, with the r e m a r k : " I give this as a curosity— p i p p l e doan't know how in m a n y cases f a s h n a b b l e life is carried on; and to know even what a real gnlmn owes is somethink instructif and agreeable". Deuceace is well aware of the advantage given him by his aristocratic n a m e and shows great art in turning it to practical account. His first victim is Mr. Dawkins, a rich young m a n fresh f r o m Oxford, whose father was a "chismonger, or somethink of that lo sort", Yellowplush tells us. Deuceace recognizes at once that the young m a n is perishing to m a k e f a s h i o n a b l e acquaintances, and arranges his strategy accordingly. His device of ordering a Strasbourg pie for himself, with a card transmitting " P r i n c e Talleyrand's compliments", and then sending the package to Dawkins to replace the luncheon he had, with p u r p o s e f u l clumsiness, knocked out of the h a n d s of Dawkin's servant, h a s the desired effect of 58

dazzling t h e young gull, and it is t h e n only a question of time until Deuceace has bled the young m a n of the last penny of his inheritance. Deuceace's next campaign, related in t h e second chapter of the "Amours", is carried on in France, w h i t h e r h e has retired to enjoy his illgotten gains in safety, and is directed against snobbish mothers w i t h marriageable daughters. By living in great splendour and by discreetly letting his high b i r t h be known, Deuceace has p l e n t i f u l opportunities f o r this sort of thing. Yellowplush remarks t h a t "if Sattn himself were a lord, I do beleave there's many vurtuous English mothers would be glad to have h i m for a son-in-law" (p. 47). His most promising victims are Lady Griffin, t h e young widow of a rich I n d i a n officer, and her step-daughter. Deuceace courts t h e m both, until h e shall be able to discover which of t h e m is the possessor of their comfortable f o r t u n e . T h e daughter, who is as impressionable as Adeliza, and h a d tried to r u n away with a French master at school, and later with a footm a n (which, Yellowplush interpolates in confidence, "is by no means unn a t r a l or unusyouall, as I c o u l d s h o w i f I l i k e d " ) , falls hopelessly in love with Deuceace; the mother, a colder nature, is nevertheless equally impressed by such a fashionable admirer — "being a pervinew herself", Yellowplush explains, "she h a d a d u b b l e respect f o r real aristocratick flesh and blood". I n spite of these favourable prospects, however, this story turns out unluckily for Deuceace. Outwitted by a still greater rogue t h a n himself, his own f a t h e r , t h e wicked old E a r l of Crabs, Deuceace marries t h e unattractive younger lady only to discover t h a t not she, b u t h e r mother, who in the m e a n t i m e has become t h e Countess of Crabs, is t h e possessor of the I n d i a n officer's fortune. In t h e Deuceace stories, once more, t h e snobbery is confined to t h e dupes. Deuceace himself apparently appreciates his aristocratic connections purely because of t h e usefulness they have for his dubious methods of gaining his livelihood. In Catherine, A Story, (1839) Thackeray gives us crime and snobbery combined in one person, in his heroine, a figure based on a noted murderess of the reign of Queen Anne. T h e plot of the story is briefly as follows: Beginning her life as a pretty and much-courted village bar-maid, Catherine wishes to profit by her beauty to rise out of h e r h u m b l e surroundings. She is determined to m a r r y no-one but a "real g e n t l e m a n " and, dazzled by the attentions of a German Count who h a p p e n s to stop at t h e inn where she is employed, is easily persuaded to follow h i m as his mistress, with the. h o p e of a marriage later. Count Galgenstein's mistreatm e n t and a b a n d o n m e n t of h e r are a t e m p o r a r y cure f o r Mistress Cat's ambitions and she marries the young carpenter who h a d long been sighing f o r her, living with h i m in complete obscurity f o r some fifteen or twenty years. At the end of this time, however, a chance meeting with Galgenstein, who shows himself still susceptible to h e r charms, awakens h e r old 59

dreams of grandeur, which, having once brought her to dishonour, are destined in the end to drive her to crime. She actually grows to believe that Galgenstein, now ambassador of the King of Bavaria, would marry her if her husband were not in the way. Completely dominated by the glamour of these hopes, she begins to nurse dark plans against her husband, whom she has long despised for his stinginess and cowardice, and in a moment of desperate resolve she murders him in his bed. The story ends with a melodramatic scene of remorse in a churchyard, a parody on the style of the then fashionable tales of crime and horror, followed, for the sake of an edifying contrast, by the actual account of the affair, and of Catherine's execution, as it appeared in the newspapers of the day. Werner Behmenburg gives considerable prominence to Catherine among Thackeray's snob figures, since the strength of will and lack of scruple she shows in the realization of her ambitions give support to his theory that the snob is preeminently a character of great vitality. It may be very much doubted whether Thackeray himself would have considered her figure of so much importance in his crusade against English snobbery. T h a t Catherine, first a penniless country bar-maid and then the wife of a small carpenter, should be dazzled by the idea of becoming the wife of a great nobleman is too comprehensible to deserve much satire, and the realization of her ambitions would have brought so many actual material advantages to her that it would be difficult to separate the pure snobbery in them from extraneous elements. Thackeray in this story was professedly setting out to write a novel about crime in all its ugliness, in conscious opposition to the then flourishing Newgate school of fiction in which criminals were made picturesque and attractive. His motive in insisting on Catherine's social ambitions was probably chiefly his desire to avoid gaining the sympathies of the reader for her by letting it seem that she had acted out of real love for Galgenstein. The only thrust at English snobbery in general is made not with reference to Catherine, as Behmenburg erroneously asserts (op. cit. p. 96), but with reference to the daughter of a rich tradesman who is eager to marry Galgenstein. It may be quoted here, as it is one of the earliest of Thackeray's taunts at the English love of titles. Yes, thank heaven! there is about a freeborn Briton a cringing baseness, and lickspittle awe of rank, which does not exist under any tyranny in Europe, and is only to be found here and in America. (p. 37.)

In Galgenstein himself, in his days at the Bavarian court, Thackeray gives an example of the courtier servility that he was to castigate so severely in the Book of Snobs. The sauerkraut episode, where Galgenstein, as he rather proudly relates, actually shed tears at the graciousness of his master, the Duke of Bavaria, in allowing him to refrain from eating sauerkraut, the Duke's favourite dish, is, however, hardly calculated to reinforce Thackeray's contention, just quoted, that the Anglo-Saxons had a monopoly in the awe of rank. 60

In Catherine, as said before, Thackeray shows snobbery and roguery in the s a m e person, but without any essential or necessary relationship between the two. Catherine is a murderess, and the motive of her crime h a p p e n s to be chiefly her ambition to rise in the social scale, but could just as well have been something else. In The Memories of Barry Lyndon (1844), Thackeray's greatest story of roguery, the two elements are also present in the hero's character, and in a much m o r e organic interrelationship. B a r r y L y n d o n is an adventurer and swindler whose way of gaining a livelihood demands that he take on the airs of a gentleman of birth and fortune, but whose nature and tastes would p r o b a b l y have led him to the same pretensions even without the lure of m a t e r i a l rewards. H e offers a very interesting study in the borderland between the " H o c h s t a p l e r " and the snob, not possessed of the "unbroken n a t u r e " that W e r f e l 5 9 gives the former, and yet not content with the self-deceptions and immaterial satisfactions of the latter. B a r r y Lyndon is an Irishman, and it is p e r h a p s not insignificant that the character in Meredith's books who bears the most resemblance to him, R i c h m o n d Roy, like B a r r y a borderline figure between adventurer and snob, although on a higher plane, was also a Celt. P e r h a p s Thackeray and Meredith felt that the strong development of the faculty of imagination in the Celts dooms their rogues to live in a world of unreality in which they deceive themselves as much as other people. T h e description of Barry's early days is a little study in Irish snobbery, the extravagances of which Thackeray later depicted with verve in his chapters on Irish Snobs in the Book of Snobs, and for .his knowledge of which he h a d gathered material on his trip to Ireland in 1842 6 0 . T h e "twopenny magnificence" of the Irish when trying to be genteel, their sham court, their imaginative boasting about their pedigrees and incomes, their tumble-down " c a s t l e s " with the roof falling in and with broken window-panes stuffed with an old petticoat, were a source of continual amusement to Thackeray. Barry and his f a m i l y are convinced of their descent f r o m the Irish kings, like Sergeant M a c S h a n e in Catherine, Mr. Costigan in Pendennis and Mulligan in Mrs. Perkin's Ball. " I myself have met as m a n y descendants from Irish kings as would form a b r i g a d e " , Thackeray writes 6 1 . B a r r y , it is true, professes to be annoyed at the numerousness of "these p r e t e n d e r s to high b i r t h " , and says at the beginning of his autobiography that, as a m a n of the world, he refrains f r o m assuming the Irish crown over his coat-of-arms because the practice is too common — but later in the story he mentions using it and even having the crown engraved on a large signet-ring, consistency being a virtue f o r which he cares little. B a r r y is the son of an attorney who h a d enjoyed a certain period of 69 60

61

Op. cit. p. 14. Cf. Irish Sketch Book, pp. 230, 342. Book of Snobs, p. 78.

61

prosperity in London as the hanger-on of Lord Bagwig (although Barry gives a much more glorious account of the origin of the family fortune), but died much in debt, the turf having been the cause of both his rise and fall in the world. Barry is left to the care of his mother, who brings him up to have a right sense of his lofty position in the world. She "never, for all her poverty, abated a jot of the dignity that was her due, and which all the neighbourhood awarded to h e r " (p. 10). She has, in addition to her pride in her pedigree and taste for keeping up appearances, another of the Irish weaknesses that Thackeray was to chronicle in the Book of Snobs — she loves to b e considered more English than Irish. Her sojourn in London gave her the authority to instruct all her relatives and friends as to what was genteel, and to set the tone in the neighbourhood with her London bonnets and dresses, even years after they h a d gone out of fashion, and though she was "pleased to be called the handsome widow", as her son reports, " s h e was still better pleased to be called the E n g l i s h widow" (p. 10). In this atmosphere of penniless pride Barry is brought up to think that any sort of work is beneath him, and learns little more than to ride a horse, to hunt and to make a great showing on next to nothing a year. Barry's start in the world is made rather abruptly, when as a young boy he is forced to leave home because of a duel. His first adventure betrays his inexperience and credulity. H e is taken in by an English couple who, by their loud assertion of their importance and their great affectation of gentility, impress the youth as being people of great fashion (although he is careful not to show his admiration, having been taught by his mother " t h a t it was the m a r k of a man of fashion never to wonder at anything, and never to admit that any house, equipage, or company he saw was more splendid or genteel than what he h a d been accustomed to at h o m e " [p. 47]). T h e fertility of the penniless Barry's imagination displays itself at this early stage of his career, when he exercises it merely for his own satisfaction and not, as later, for profit, in the declaration made by him to his new friends that he is a young gentleman of large fortune and good family and that his mother gives him an allowance of five hundred pounds a year. For some time Barry lives in what he considers the best society of Dublin, until chance reveals to him that his hosts are a pair of professional adventurers, and as at the same time they learn of his poverty, he parts f r o m them on rather b a d terms but by common consent. In Barry's subsequent adventures as a soldier, first under the English flag and later as an unwilling captive in the ranks of the great Frederick's army, he shows himself fearless and unscrupulous, but it is not until he escapes from the army that he has the opportunity to utilize his special talents to the full. T h e chance meeting with an uncle of his who styles himself the Chevalier de B a l i b a r i and makes his living as a professional gambler, opens a new field of activity to Barry and one in which he immediately shows himself a master. H e and his uncle find rich pastures in 62

the countless small European courts, where in those days gambling was the reigning passion. Barry, flaunting his coat of arms with the Irish crown, soon finds himself acquainted with dukes and duchesses in quantities. Anyone who questions his nobility is called upon to meet his sword, and as his skill is known, he is respected on the surface, if not in reality. He finds fashionable life most delightful. " I knew I was born a gentleman", he tells us, " f r o m the kindly way in which I took to the business" (p. 119). He plans to escape from the profitable, but rather uncertain, career of gambler by making a brilliant marriage. He prepares a plan and rent-roll of his supposed estates in Ireland as well as a written genealogy of his family up to King B r i a n Boru, to set before the parents of prospective brides, but finds that the men who are glad to play cards with him prove cautions when it is a question of entrusting him with their daughters. He is thus forced to have recourse to intrigue to secure his wishes. T h e greatest adventure of his continental career is his attempt, by far from honourable means, to force the Countess Ida, a rich heiress at one of the courts he visits, to marry him in order to save her lover from disgrace. T h e scheme fails by a hair, and Barry is forced to seek other fields. His next attempt, on the proud and wealthy Lady Lyndon, whom he meets at Spa, brings him to the peak of his worldly career. A whirlwind courtship, in which he does not shrink from using intimidation when other methods fail, wins him the widow's hand and fortune, and thereby a position of great prominence in English society, which he proceeds to enjoy to the full. His financial wants now being satisfied, he is able to indulge his dreams of grandeur, and sets out on a ruinous and unsuccessful campaign to secure a peerage. His extravagance, his dissipation and the mistreatment of his wife, which causes her finally to turn against him in spite of her infatuation, soon bring his downfall, and the brilliant Barry Lyndon ends his days in Fleet Prison. Barry's character is a curious mixture of vanity and cool calculation, of snobbery and swindling. He has a keen eye for the snobbery of the general public and for the profit to be gained by a man who knows how to impose on it. F o r the English of the middle ranks of life he finds an overbearing manner the most effective method of control. " T h e s e honesl Britons . . . liked to be bullied", he remarks of some of his victims, "and, in the course of a long experience, I have met with but very few Englishmen who are not of their way of thinking" (p. 237). W i t h others he finds flattery the best trick, as with the tutor of Lady Lyndon's son, whose services he needed. " I took care to make friends with this person, who, being a college tutor and an Englishman, was ready to go on his knees to anyone who resembled a man of fashion. Seeing me with my retinue of servants, my hussar and horses, . . . saluting the greatest people in Europe as we met on the course, or at the Spas, Runt was dazzled by my advances and was mine by a beckoning of the finger" (p. 174). B u t if, like Deuceace, he preys on snobbish dupes and has a keen eye for their weaknesses, he 63

appears, u n l i k e Deuceace, to attach considerable i m p o r t a n c e to social prestige f o r its own sake, a p a r t f r o m material advantages. W h e n h e m a n u f a c t u r e s documents about his supposed possessions in Ireland, h e is f r a n k l y the swindler, but in much of his bragging about his origins t h e r e seems to be as much of genuine snobbery as of calculation, as appears in his very first entrance into t h e world, when his instinctive boasting of his f o r t u n e was presumably without any intention of swindling his new friends. And in t h e last great effort of his career, his pursuit of a peerage, t h e h o p e of m a t e r i a l advantage is f a r outweighed by t h e mere desire f o r social prestige f o r its own sake. I t is not certain just how m u c h general psychological validity Thackeray i n t e n d e d to give to this sketch of Barry's character, b u t w h e t h e r intentionally or fortuitously, the p o r t r a i t is probably not u n t r u e to t h e mentality of the average adventurer. T h e distinction between t h e "Hochstapler" and t h e snob made by W e r f e l is valid as a definition of types, b u t it is possible t h a t t h e Hochstapler p u r e and simple, t h e " u n b r o k e n n a t u r e " setting out to d u p e his fellow creatures by a deliberate pose, is to be f o u n d less f r e q u e n t l y in l i f e t h a n t h e Barry mentality, in which, a n a t u r a l inclination f o r posing as a person of i m p o r t a n c e h a p p e n i n g to be accomp a n i e d by a certain amount of shrewdness and unscrupulousness, the a t t a i n m e n t of m a t e r i a l profit goes h a n d in h a n d with t h e satisfaction of t h e "Geltungstrieb". Aside f r o m t h e psychological interest of t h e story, its brilliance lies chiefly in t h e skilful irony secured by Thackeray's device of letting Barry recount his own misdeeds with t h e greatest self-satisfaction. And Barry's frankness about his rascality is motivated by his snobbery, for h e looks on all his shady dealings as merely t h e excusable shifts to which adverse circumstances may reduce a gentleman if h e is not to stoop to the dish o n o u r of gaining his livelihood in some "low trade". H e is genuinely convinced t h a t t h e l i f e of a crooked gambler is m u c h m o r e h o n o u r a b l e t h a t t h a t of t h e "scum", as h e calls t h e m , who follow trades. During his t i m e with t h e Prussian army he has t h e opportunity of bettering his situation by working at a trade, as many of his mess did, b u t puts t h e idea aside with scorn: " m y h o n o u r f o r b a d e m e ; f o r as a gentleman, I could not soil my fingers by a m a n u a l occupation" (p. 96). T h e discredit attaching to his profession of gambling h e considers a mere bourgeois prejudice. A vulgar national prejudice has chosen to cast a slur upon the character of men of honour engaged in the profession of play; but I speak of the good old days in Europe, before the cowardice of the French aristocracy (in the shameful Revolution, which served them right) brought discredit and ruin upon our order. They cry fie now upon men engaged in play. . . . It is a conspiracy of the middle classes against gentlemen: it is only the shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry: it has been wrecked, along with other privileges of men of birth, (p. 121.)

F u r t h e r m o r e , his outrageous plot to force the Countess I d a to m a r r y h i m is in his eyes merely a justifiable measure of worldly wisdom, a n d h e 64

dismisses the whole affair airily with the remark that "it is only your low people who marry for affection" (p. 130). Similarly, the most disagreeable part of his whole story, his brutal treatment of his wife, he explains equally calmly: "Lady Lyndon and I did not quarrel more than fashionable people do" (p. 237). There is thus an undercurrent of more general satire in Barry Lyndon, which goes beyond Thackeray's professed purpose of showing a rogue in all his rascality, and attacks the general ideals of society, especially the conception of the gentleman in the conventional acceptation of the word, one of his favourite themes. He not only combatted the vulgar idea of the gentleman as a man with good clothes and a carriage, who does not have to work, but also that other more respectable conception of the gentleman as a man who merely lives up to an artificial code of honour. When he has Barry boast of the duel in which his father had killed Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone with the nai've remark: "He was quite in the wrong, having insulted Lady Fuddlestone, when in liquor, at the Brentford Assembly; but like a gentleman he scorned to apologize" (p. 37), Thackeray is undoubtedly making a thrust at the conventional code of honour as much as at Barry. Barry, of course, cannot be said to have lived up fully to the gentleman's code, even for those laxer days. But two of the main points in the conventional idea of the gentleman he certainly lived up to: he was determined never to stoop to remunerative labour, and he was ready to fight anyone who offered. The fact that he also cheated at cards, while it put him beyond the pale in popular estimation, was in Thackeray's opinion not much worse than the fact that so many gentlemen of good standing should, as he asserts in the Book of Snobs, make it their sport to cheat and ruin honest tradesmen. The irony he brings to bear on Barry's continual boasting of his "honour" is double-edged, on the one hand revealing Barry's peculiar distortions of the accepted code and at the same time calling the code itself in question. Looked at from this point of view, Barry is a "snob" in all the senses of the word: in the modern sense, because he loved rank and social prestige; in the conventional sense of Thackeray's day, because he had a spurious pedigree; and in the deeper sense that Thackeray gave to this meaning in the Book of Snobs, because he had a false idea of what constitutes a gentleman. Parvenu

Snobs.

The first of Thackeray's stories of parvenus is Cox's Diary, written in 1839. This story of a barber enriched by an unexpected inheritance is a burlesque account of the vicissitudes and humiliations awaiting the newly rich in society. The chief snob in the story is Mrs. Cox, who takes her new dignity very seriously, forcing her husband to cut all his old friends, and looking down with ineffable scorn on Orlando Crump, Cox's former assistant in the shop, and the romantic adorer of their daughter "Jemimarann". The Coxe Coxes, as they call themselves, are soon surrounded by 65

a circle of well-connected rogues who introduce them to society in the hope of having a share of the Coxes' fortune for themselves. At their grand ball, the invitations to which had been accepted, through the influence of Tufthunt, one of their followers, by a number of titled personages of somewhat damaged reputation, they are completely ignored by their guests and the party ends in an uproar when Cox actually plucks up the courage to offer to shake hands with their most illustrious guest, the Duchess of Zero. She shrieks for her carriage, loudly proclaiming that Tufthunt had promised her that not a soul in the house should speak to her. Discouraged in their attack on London society, they move to the country, where Cox tries to become a country gentleman. Their reception in country society is at first more favourable: " T h e whole county came about us, ate our dinners and suppers, danced at our balls — ay, and spoke to us too", Cox reports. His first trial of hunting is hilariously disastrous, however, and the greatest entertainment they arrange for their county friends ends in a noisy scandal when the Baron de Punter, their newest titled acquisition, is threatened with arrest by a bailiff — they later discover the Baron in Paris in his true character of horse-trainer in a circus. After a year of humiliations on the one hand and trickeries on the other, their downfall comes when it is discovered that their rich uncle had left a will giving his property to someone else. Cox is almost pleased at the idea of returning to his snug little shop and to a life of simplicity and contentment, but Mrs. Cox remains as proud as ever. She is outraged when the faithful Orlando Crump renews his addresses to their not unwilling daughter: "Why you conceive, Mr. Crump", she says with a great deal of dignity, "that, connected as we are, a young man born in a work —", but Mr. Cox suddenly displays the strength of mind to assert his authority in the household. "Woman", he cries, interrupting her further speech, "hold your foolish tongue. Your absurd pride has been the ruin of us hitherto; and from this day, I'll have no more of i t 6 2 " . This little morality of snobbery and its punishment then ends with the marriage of Orlando and Jemimarann, and with the Cox family's settling down to their old life in great contentment and peace of spirit. Thackeray's second story of parvenus, The Diary of C. Jeames de la Pluche (1845), has a similar moral, but is written in a considerably more successful humorous tone. James Plush, a footman who gains a great fortune in railway speculation and sets out in society as Jeames de la Pluche, Esq., is apparently a near relative of Yellowplush, whose eccentricities of spelling he shares. In the first flush of his glory Jeames blossoms out into an outrageous snob. He procures a pedigree from the Herald Office, having conveniently discovered that he descends from an ancient Norman family, takes lessons in "mangtiang and depotment" from a fashionable master, has himself presented at Court in a tremendous uniform by some of the impecunious 62

66

Yellowplush Papers etc., p. 287.

aristocratic friends who p r o m p t l y surround h i m a f t e r his access of fortune, t h i n k s seriously of requesting a baronetcy f r o m t h e government, and heartlessly throws over the pretty Mary A n n f o r w h o m h e h a d long been sighing in the kitchen. H e explains to h e r t h a t "altered suckmstancies" r e n d e r t h e i r marriage impossible, h e having entered into a new "spear of l i f e " w h e r e he can "mingle with his native aristoxxy". " D o young fellers of r a n k generally marry out of the K i t c h i n g ? " h e asks. "If we cast our i's u p o n a low-born gal, I needn't say it's only a t e m p o r y distraction, pore passy le tong" (p. 105). Like t h e Coxes, h e has certain mishaps when h e attempts to display his rapidly acquired fashionable accomplishments, as w h e n he ignominiously slips over his horse's tail into t h e m u d when riding in t h e park, and like t h e Coxes, also, h e finds a certain n u m b e r of people w i t h distinguished names who introduce h i m to society, quit f o r borrowing money f r o m h i m at f r e q u e n t intervals. He is less in danger of rebuffs t h a n the Coxes, however, since his influence with t h e railway companies makes h i m much sought a f t e r by those who are eager to secure some of the precious shares t h a t were making so m a n y fortunes. His f o r m e r mistress tries to persuade h i m to m a r r y her daughter, and h e finally becomes engaged to the d a u g h t e r of t h e great Bareacres family. He derives a comprehensible pleasure f r o m seeing all the great people h e used to wait on now at h i s beck and call. W h e n the Earl of Bareacres begs f o r a f e w shares, h e remarks: "I gave the old humbugg a few shares out of my own pocket. 'There, old Pride', says I, 'I like to see you down on your knees to a footman. There, old Pompossaty! Take fifty pound; I like to see you come cringing and begging for it.' Whenever I see him in a v e r y public place, I take my change for my money. I digg him in the ribbs or pat his padded old shoulders. I call him, 'Bareacres, my old buck!' and I see him wince. It does my art good." (p. 118.)

T h e irony in this story goes somewhat deeper t h a n in Cox's Diary because, alongside of the obvious raillery of the presumptuousness of the newly rich, there is an unmistakable parody of t h e m o r e respectable absurdities of t h e socially well-established. Jeames is not stupid and h e very soon catches the right tone of lofty condescension suitable to a gentleman of his distinguished birth. W h e n a meeting with Mary Ann, p r e t t i e r t h a n ever, threatens to u n m a n him, he struggles against giving way "to fealinx u n w u t h y of a m e m b e r of the aristoxxy" and explains to h e r once more t h a t it cannot b e : — " I pinted out t h e differents of our sitawashns; igsplained to her t h a t p r o p p a t y has its jewties as well as its previletches" (p. 131). And when he visits his prospective father-in-law in t h e country, h e makes a speech to the t e n a n t r y in h o n o u r of a labourer w h o h a d brought u p sixteen children and lived sixty years on t h e estate at a miserable wage. His condescension is b e a u t i f u l . I am not prowd, though I know my station. I shook hands with that man in my lavinder kidd gloves. I told him that the purshuit of hagriculture was the noblest 67

hockupation of humannaty; I spoke of the yoming of Hengland, who (under the command of my hancisters) had conquered at Hadgincourt and Cressy; and I gave him a pair of new velveteen inagspressibles, with two and six in each pocket, as a reward for three score years of labor. Fitzwarren, my man, brought them forrards on a satting cushing. Has I sat down, defning chears selewted the horator; the band struck up "The Good Old English Gentleman", (p. 130.)

T h e end of Jeames's story is similar to that of the Coxes'. A p a n i c on the Stock E x c h a n g e makes his fortune melt away, and he has to settle down to a s i m p l e l i f e as the husband of Mary Ann, whose charms h e h a d always secretly preferred to those of the aristocratic beauties who were offered to the rich de la Pluche by their m a m m a s . H e is as philosophic as Mr. Cox, and tells a reporter, who had come to interview h i m in the public house that he conducts with considerable profit, " I ' m a p p y -— p r a p s betwixt you and m e I ' m in my proper spear. I enjoy my glass of beer or port quite as m u c h as my clarrit in my prawsprus days. I've a good busness, which is likely to be better. And if a m a n can't be h a p p y with Mary Hann, he's a b e e s t " (p. 152). T h e moral of these two stories, to the effect that the j a y s of life should not deck themselves in peacock's feathers, as he expressed it at another place, is one that often recurs in Thackeray's works. It would be unjust to look on him as merely preaching to people of h u m b l e r origins that they should "know their place". T h a t condescending f o r m u l a of u p p e r class complacency irritated him every bit as much as any of the naiver presumptions of the newly arrived, as the Book of Snobs a m p l y testifies. B u t it was a tenet of his practical philosophy of life that the people who were not trained for society would be h a p p i e r if they did not try to push their way into it. T h e Coxes are taught their lesson rather harshly, and it is p e r h a p s true that Thackeray h a d not at this period the broad tolerance of a Dickens, who saw what was rather touching in the vanities of his Kenwicks and other ambitious little people. B u t Thackeray's harshness was chiefly directed towards Mrs. Cox, who h a d neither self-respect enough to be offended at the affronts of their f a s h i o n a b l e acquaintances nor loyalty enough to remember old friends, who was pleased when a little lord in a pinafore took notice of her (p. 264) and was angry at her daughter f o r repulsing the insulting advances of a nobleman (p. 269), and w h o m even their final misfortunes could not shake out of her arrogance toward the f a i t h f u l Orlando. T o w a r d the good b a r b e r himself, on the other h a n d , Thackeray shows considerable tolerance and sympathy for his comprehensible pleasure in feeling himself a great gentleman for a while, just as he quite understands J e a m e s ' pleasure at being arrogant toward the p e o p l e who h a d bullied him in the past. And the f a s h i o n a b l e people in b o t h stories are treated just as severely as Mrs. Cox is. T h e i r insolent ill manners, their meanness in courting people whom they secretly despise are pitilessly displayed. T h e people surrounding the Coxes are, indeed, so outrageous that they are hardly credible. In J e a m e s ' diary the fashionable p e o p l e are shown of a more m i x e d and consequently m o r e 68

human character, and the better ones among them respect Jeames, who was at heart not such a very bad snob after all, for acknowledging his old grandmother when she arrived at his grand dinner in her fish-cart. Shabby

Genteel

Snobs.

A year after Jeames' Diary Thackeray turned from the vicissitudes of the newly rich to portray those of another unlucky class of society, the shabby genteel. A Shabby Genteel Story (1840) is, in its outlines, the not especially original history of the seduction of an unhappy Cinderella by a wild young gentleman of scanty scruples, but the portrayal of the milieu is a merciless study of the pettiness and sordidness possible in the lives of people who "have had reverses", but are determined not to lose a tittle of their dignity. Once more the chief snob is a woman. Mrs. Gann, "large, pompous and atrociously genteel", as Thackeray describes her, had been the widow of a penniless ensign, and had captured as second husband a prosperous oil merchant. When her husband's firm fails, the family is reduced to a drab existence of "pride and poverty". Mr. Gann is of course not permitted by his life to lower himself by taking a clerk's place, and leads an idle and hopeless life going from one pretence of genteel employment to another, representing — always unsuccessfully — numberless companies with high-sounding names and brief lives, but in reality spending most of his time at the public-house, his only refuge from his wife's complaints and continual reminders of his incapacity. In his luckless business ventures Mr. Gann is a preliminary study for Mr. Sedley of Vanity Fair. Mrs. Gann, in the meantime, supports the family by holding a second-class boarding house at a summer resort, the moderate success of which she attributes wholly to the pretence of dingy gentility she painfully keeps up. Although both husband and wife consider themselves victims and martyrs, Thackeray remarks that "such pecuniary misfortunes as they are called, are by no means misfortunes to people of certain dispositions, but actual pieces of good luck" (p. 11). Mr. Gann finds considerable solace in recounting his former glories to his new associates at the taverns, and "was voted at the 'Bag of Nails' and the 'Magpie' a tip-top fellow and real gentleman, whereas he had been considered an ordinary vulgar man by his fashionable associates at Putney". And Mrs. Gann finds equal pleasure in bragging of her fashionable acquaintances: "to hear her you would fancy she was known to and connected with half the peerage". "She stood upon her rank and did not fail to tell her lodgers that she was a 'gentlewoman' " (p. 12), and found that she could make more effect in her new circles with her old finery, much remodelled, than formerly when her wardrobe had been new. These pleasures, confirming the old fable of the big frog in the little puddle, were, however, not sufficient to mellow the lady's nature. Mrs. 69

Gann's character could be adequately summed up in the brief comment made by René Galland on one of Meredith's figures: — "Ridicule, elle est aussi méchante 6 3 ". Her vulgar pretentiousness is only equalled by her petty ingenuity in making everyone about her miserable. She never permits her husband to forget that she is the martyr of his business mischances, and continually makes meaning remarks to her boarders and her friends about people who "live on charity, like some folks". She herself quite ignores the fact that her own family had been penniless and obscure, and that she and her mother had forced Mr. Gann into the marriage by a base trick. Most repelling of all, however, is her treatment of her youngest daughter, Caroline. Caroline, as the child of her second marriage, had been her favourite daughter as long as she was expected to inherit Mr. Gann's property, but after his failure had deprived her of these hopes, was made to feel her inferiority to the two daughters from Mrs. Gann's first marriage, who had small inheritances coming to them from their father's family. If, as Thackeray may have feared, and as has indeed happened 6 4 , some readers should be inclined to excuse Mrs. Gann's pretensions and vanities, on the grounds perhaps that the dreariness and insignificance of the circumstances of her life made it comprehensible that she should seek compensation in imaginary grandeurs, they will have their sympathies alienated by the heartless way in which she makes of Caroline a drudge and slavey, and vents on her all her ill temper and sarcasm. It was a favourite device of Thackeray's, when he was not sure that he had succeeded in making a character unsympathetic, to show him or her heartless toward children. Barry Lyndon and Becky Sharp are examples. In Mrs. Gann's case it is a question whether Thackeray has not somewhat overdone this side of her character, to the detriment of the artistic unity of his story. In her relations to Caroline Mrs. Gann approaches at times real wickedness, like a cruel stepmother in the fairy tales, instead of remaining in her character of vulgar vanity and pettiness. Thackeray's decision not to complete this story, although primarily explained by the tragedy which occured to his wife at this period, as he indicates in the Preface, may conceivably also have been influenced by his dissatisfaction at the story's vacillation between a powerful, if cruel, realism, and a kind of melodramatic triteness. Caroline's seducer, the well-connected George Brandon, who boarded with Mrs. Gann in a period of temporary financial difficulties, also comes rather close to being a conventional villain, but it is only in his character of snob that he is of interest to us here. The dissipated son of an honest clergyman, whose life had been embittered by his son's evil ways, he appears in the story as the boon companion and toady of the rich young Lord Cinqbars. Brandon has the advantage over the Ganns of possessing 63 George Meredith, p. 233. Whibley (William Makepeace Thackeray, p. 40) finds Thackeray too severe on Mrs. Gann's foibles. 64

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good manners and some wit, but his meanness is laid bare by Thackeray just as mercilessly as theirs. " M r . B r a n d o n " , he writes, " w a s a tuft-hunter of the genteel sort; his pride being quite as slavish, and his haughtiness as m e a n and cringeing, in fact, as poor Mrs. Gann's stupid wonder and respect for all the persons whose names are written with titles before them. 0 free and h a p p y Britons, what a miserable, truckling, cringeing race ye a r e ! " (p. 26). At the s a m e time as he exposes the tuft-hunter, however, Thackeray warns against taking at its f u l l f a c e value the conventional indignation against this t y p e of snobbery, which, he suggest, is as often as not motivated more by envy than by genuine antipathy to the fault itself: — T h e reader h a s no d o u b t e n c o u n t e r e d a n u m b e r of such swaggerers in the course of h i s conversation with the w o r l d — m e n of a decent m i d d l e rank, who affect to despise it, and h e r d only with p e r s o n s of the fashion. T h i s is an offence in a m a n which n o n e of u s can f o r g i v e ; we call h i m tuft-hunter, lickspittle, sneak, u n m a n l y ; we hate, and p r o f e s s to d e s p i s e him. I f e a r it is no such thing. W e envy L i c k s p i t t l e , that is the f a c t ; a n d t h e r e f o r e hate him. W e r e h e to p l a g u e u s with the stories of J o n e s and B r o w n , our f a m i l i a r s , the m a n would b e a s i m p l e b o r e , his stories h e a r d p a t i e n t l y ; but as soon a s h e talks of my lord or the d u k e , we are in a r m s against him. I have seen a w h o l e m e r r y party in R u s s e l l S q u a r e grow s u d d e n l y g l o o m y and d u m b , b e c a u s e a pert barrister, in a l o u d voice, t o l d a story of L o r d T h i s or the M a r q u i s of T h a t . We all hated that m a n ; and I w o u l d wager that every one of the fourteen p e r s o n s a s s e m b l e d r o u n d the b o i l e d turkey a n d s a d d l e of m u t t o n . . . was m u t t e r i n g inwardly, " A p l a g u e on that f e l l o w ! h e k n o w s a lord, a n d I never s p o k e to m o r e than three in the w h o l e course of m y l i f e . " T o our betters we can reconcile ourselves, . . . but we can't p a r d o n our e q u a l s going b e y o n d us. (p. 26.)

T h i s is one of the earliest passages in which Thackeray shows himself conscious of the fact that the criticism of other people's snobbery can sometimes b e an outgrowth of an equal snobbery on the critic's part. If the Shabby Genteel Story is rather depressing in its unsparing exposure of pettiness and vulgar meanness, the next story that we have to consider, Dennis Haggarty's Wife (1843), is a still more merciless, and almost p a i n f u l piece of realism a p p l i e d to a somewhat similar milieu. With these two stories Thackeray could have laid claim to being one of the founders of the gloomier school of naturalistic novels, and with them in m i n d it is curious to hear him later condemning F l a u b e r t so uncompromisingly f o r the cruelty of his r e a l i s m 6 5 . T h e other stories in the series " M e n ' s Wives", of which this tale forms a part, also have certain passages dealing with snobbery, but at less length t h a n Dennis Haggarty's Wife. I n The Ravenswing, for instance, there are humorous descriptions of the bald-headed tailor and the pudgy hairdresser in their brief taste of high-life, and the heroine Morgiana herself, who confesses " O h I do love a gentleman d e a r l y " , is m a d e to suffer sadly for letting herself be dazzled by the fine clothes and fashionable associates of the scoundrelly Captain Walker. A n d in Mr. and Mrs. Frank 65

L e w i s M e l v i l l e , W. M. Thackeray,

p . 181. 71

Berry the heroine, "long, genteel and dreary", is a forerunner of some of the " R e s p e c t a b l e S n o b s " in the Snob Papers. She pours over the Peerage and annotates the passages dealing with her relatives, snubs her husband's old friends, and believes that her father, Sir George Catacomb, and George III, to whom he was apothecary, were the greatest men the world ever saw. B u t these touches are unimportant when c o m p a r e d to the blatant Irish snobbery of the G a m family into which the unfortunate Dennis Haggarty h a d the imprudence to marry. Mrs. M a j o r Gam, née a Molloy of Molloyville, belongs to two different categories of snobbish types that Thackeray liked to d r a w : — the Irish snob, and the ambitious match-making mother. Her descriptions of the splendours of her ancestral home and the brilliance of her f a m i l y , which won f o r her among the irreverent the n a m e of Mrs. M a j o r " G a m m o n " , are duplicates of the imaginative effusions of all the rest of Thackeray's Irish snobs. Her match-making activities in the interest of her daughter J e m i m a , a maiden of many-sided accomplishments but only moderate attractions, were considerably h a m p e r e d by the h i g h demands she m a d e of any young m a n who m i g h t dare to lay claim to the h a n d of a descendant of the Molloys. " A s she l o o k e d with the contempt which no small number of Irish p e o p l e feel u p o n all persons who get their bread by labour or commerce; and as she was a person whose energetic manners, costumes, and brogue were not much to the taste of quiet English country gentleman, J e m i m a — sweet, spotless flower! — still remained on her hands, a thought withered, p e r h a p s , and seedy", to quote the words of the good Fitzboodle, who figures as the narrator of this story, and who met Mrs. G a m in about the eighth year of her hunting of a son-in-law. T h e raw-boned, good-hearted Dennis H a g g a r t y , one of A.he very few people who took the widow's pretensions to grandeur seriously and felt a due respect for J e m i m a ' s charms, is scorned by Mrs. G a m as a mere regimental Assistant-Surgeon. It is not until J e m i m a , unknown to Haggarty, is horribly disfigured by the smallpox, that she learns to appreciate his faithfulness, and permits him, in a darkened r o o m in which he cannot see the girl's features, to seal his engagement with her daughter. T h e visit that Fitzboodle pays to Haggarty and his wife some years later reveals the poor Dennis in a situation of such sordid misery as is not b e f o u n d described in any other of Thackeray's works. Fitzboodle meets Dennis, thin and shabby, airing a couple of dirty children in the park, and is led to their home, a dingy little cottage proudly entitled " N e w Molloyville". H e r e he meets Mrs. Haggarty, slovenly, absurdly dressed in f a d e d finery, and completely blind from the small-pox that h a s m a d e a revolting wreck of her face. Haggarty, who has given u p his profession in order to care for his wife and their numerous children, is as much convinced as ever that he has married the paragon of women, and Mrs. Haggarty, who h a s been k e p t in merciful ignorance of her disfigurement, 72

is as insufferably proud and affected as her mother. She greets Fitzboodle in the Irish-English which Thackeray could take off so well, trying her utmost to disguise her brogue and to speak "with the true dawdling distingué E n g l i s h air". T h e scantiness of the f a r e and the sordidness of the surroundings are m a d e painfully conspicuous by her condescending air of offering hospitality in a mansion and by the endless anecdotes of fashionable l i f e with which she entertains her guests. Fitzboodle soon discovers t h a t Haggarty's quixotic devotion is received with scant gratitude, and t h a t he is bullied by his mother-in-law and tormented by J e m i m a ' s incessant complaints of her sacrifices and of the luxuries to which she h a d , supposedly, been accustomed before her marriage. T h e description of the stupid snobbery of the woman, her vulgarity and her brutal egoism, coupled with that of the poverty and material discomfort which were largely the result of her impractical ideas of grandeur, makes such a distressing picture that it would hardly have been necessary, in order to complete the effect, for Thackeray to add the end of the story, in which we see Dennis, shabbier and thinner than before, in the depths of very real despair at having been actually abandoned by his wife, who, having seen to it that his money was all m a d e over to her, no longer troubled to conceal that she had never loved h i m and would be h a p p y to be rid of him. This is b y f a r the darkest portrayal of snobbery to be f o u n d in Thackeray's writings, and is in fact his darkest picture of h u m a n nature in general. T h e story seems to have been written in a mood of genuine misanthropy, rather than from any spirit of artistic experiment in gloominess. " W h a t myriads of souls are there of this a d m i r a b l e sort", Thackeray comments with reference to Mrs. Haggarty, "selfish, stingy, ignorant, passionate, b r u t a l ; b a d sons, mothers, fathers, never known to do kind actions" (p. 324). C o m p a r e d to J e m i m a Haggarty, " y o n d e r f o u l mass of greedy v a n i t y " , as Fitzboodle-Thackeray calls her, even Mrs. Gann of the Shabby Genteel Story is a relatively h u m a n e and decent creature. A n d whereas in that story a certain relief to the dismalness was given by the figures of the good-natured painter Andrea, with his devotion to his " h a r t " , and of the loyal little servant Becky, in Dennis Haggarty's Wife the only person who has our sympathy, Dennis himself, is so poor-spirited and gullible in his submission to his terrible wife and her mother that the sympathy is almost lost in exasperated contempt. T h e whole bitter comedy of his l i f e is given a twist of savage irony by the fact that he assents to all his wife's pretensions to superiority to him with a kind of pride: Honest Dennis, far from being angry at this perpetual, wearisome, impudent recurrence to her own superiority, rather encouraged the conversation than otherwise. It pleased him to hear his wife discourse about her merits and family splendours. He was so thoroughly beaten down and henpecked, that he, as it were, gloried in his servitude, and fancied that his wife's magnificence reflected credit on himself, (p. 325.)

73

T h e s e two stories of shabby genteel life are, with their insistence on meanness and vulgarity, almost better testimony to the younger Thackeray's mediocre estimate of human nature in most of its aspects than the previous group, with its preoccupation with roguery and crime. T h e rogues had at least to have some qualities of courage and resourcefulness in t h e i r struggles with organized society, whereas the combats of his characters in these other stories are petty tooth-and-nail struggles to retain petty advantages, with no great risks of loss or prospects of gains sufficient to stir t h e imagination. As for the revelation these stories have to m a k e with respect to T h a c k e r a y ' s conception of snobbery at this period, it must of course be kept in mind that in such figures as Mrs. Gann and Mrs. Gam, the general detestableness of t h e i r characters is not exclusively due to their snobbery. I n addition to being snobbish they are hard-hearted, selfish and stupid. B u t it is significant of the harshness with which T h a c k e r a y judged snobbery at this date that these two most disagreeable of all his characters both have snobbery as probably the most conspicuous single quality of their characters, and that it is not taken as, say, comic relief in their general disagreeableness, but as a definite intensification of it. It is in this group of stories t h a t Thackeray's conception of snobbery as essentially a form of m e a n n e s s , as expressed in his famous definition, has its most e m p h a t i c illustration. Respectable

Snobs.

The Bedford Row Conspiracy (1840) and The Great Hoggarty Diamond (1841) are the two stories among Thackeray's earlier writings that come nearest, in tone and themes, to the great novels by which h e was to be chiefly known. T h e y are attempts to look at life as a whole, to show tenderness and honesty as well as roguery and meanness. F o r almost t h e first time in t h e work of the young Thackeray we find, in the words of E . Schaub, " e i n L a c h e n ohne M i ß t o n 6 6 " . T h e r e are rogues and snobs here too, but they are given, so to speak, their due perspective by being set beside the thoroughly well-meaning, if not particularly heroic or sublime, h u m a n beings whom Thackeray was to choose by preference as his heroes and heroines. I n t h e Bedford Row Conspiracy, which is from a technical point of view t h e less m a t u r e of the two, a charming and humorous little love story is entangled in a r a t h e r complicated, although quite harmless, political conspiracy which gives T h a c k e r a y the opportunity for some r a t h e r sharp political and social satire. T h e snobs of the history are t h e heroine's guardians, General Sir George Grimsby Gorgon and his wife. T h e General is both a military and a social snob. He is described as having never drawn his sword against an enemy and as " t h e r e f o r e outrageously military in talk and tenue". " H e gave grand entertainftients, 66

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W. M. Thackeray's Entwicklung als

Schriftsteller.

and never asked a friend by chance; had splendid liveries, and starved his people; and was as dull, stingy, pompous, insolent, cringing, ill-tempered a little creature as ever was known" (p. 342). His wife was "a dull, phlegmatic person and contented herself generally with despising her neighbours" (p. 347). Lady Gorgon was the daughter of a brewer, so that her outrageous pride is given a touch of added gratuitousness. From Thackeray's equal insistence on her husband's snobbery, however, it is clear that he is here not primarily interested in depicting parvenu insolence, but the snobbery of the well-established classes in general. That the person who is the most ostentatious in sneering is herself a person of mediocre birth is merely an additional psychological observation on Thackeray's part. The Gorgons have political ambitions, which they hope will lead them to a peerage, and are thereby forced into the unpleasant necessity of trying to make themselves popular wiih the kind of people whom they otherwise take the greatest pleasure in snubbing. Thackeray delights in painting the humiliations these arrogant people are willing to undergo to gain their end. The election ball, where Lady Gorgon is forced to dance with the local apothecaries and coal-dealers, but where she condescends with such visible ill grace that her enemies carry the day in spite of her sacrifices, is the high point of the comedy. The lofty airs of the Tory party, led by the Gorgons, stir their opponents to ever louder and more personal protests, and the party ends in an uproar. Thackeray apologizes for the vulgarity of the scene. If the polite reader has been shocked by certain vulgarities of Mr. Scully and his friends (Gorgon's opponents), he must remember that the inhabitants of Oldborough were chiefly tradespeople, not of refined habits— that Mr. Scully himself had only for three months mingled among the aristocracy —• and finally, and to conclude, that the proud vulgarity of the great Sir George Gorgon and his family was infinitely more odious and contemptible than the mean vulgarity of the Scullyites and their leader, (p. 353.)

It will be remembered that the Great Hoggarty Diamond, which was written a year after this story, had a similar passage (quoted above, p. 17) referring to the equal vulgarity of insolence to inferiors on the part of great people, and bad manners and false pretensions on the part of those of humble rank. The idea seems to have been uppermost in Thackeray's mind at this period. The Great Hoggarty Diamond offers as its chief specimen of this "proud vulgarity" the impeccable figure of the Right Honourable Edmund Preston, Secretary of State, a cold and prim snob of the most respectable variety. It is his lofty insolence to the young hero of the story that occasions the remark above mentioned. Other snobs in the story are Mrs. Roundhead, the head clerk's wife, with her Peerage and her liking for conversations about West End people, and Mrs. Hoggarty, the hero's rich Irish aunt, who boasts of her family's possessions and doggedly attempts to break into London society with all the naïve crudity characteristic of most of Thackeray's Irish snobs. Novelties are the 75

figures of a hypocritical "antisnob" and of a most likable non-snob, in the persons of Mr. Brough, the financier, and of Samuel Titmarsh, the hero of the story, respectively. Mr. Brough, the speculator on a grand scale who plunges so many people into ruin, has the affectation of an honest self-respect as an English merchant and a God-fearing Christian. His character is best shown in the speech he makes to the young men who hope to win the hand of his daughter. " T h e daughter of a British merchant need not be ashamed of the means by which her father gets his bread. I'm not ashamed — I'm not proud. Those who know John Brough, know that ten years ago he was a poor clerk like my friend Titmarsh here, and is now worth half a million. Is there any duke in the land that can give a better dinner than John Brough; or a larger fortune to his daughter than John Brough? Why, sir, the humble person now speaking to you could buy out many a German duke! But I'm not proud — no, no, not proud. There's my daughter — look at her — when I die, she will be mistress of my fortune; but am I proud? No! Let him who can win her marry her, that's what I say. B e it you, Mr. Fitzgig, son of a peer of the realm; or you, Bill Tidd. Be it a duke or a shoeblack, what do I care, hey? what do I c a r e ? " (p. 56.)

All of which does not prevent him, any more than his loudly proclaimed piety, from seeking the young man with the most money for his daughter, nor from making most invidious distinctions in sending out invitations to his dinner-parties, nor from taking many other measures not wholly consonant with the principles of such an outspoken democrat. But it must be admitted that his attentions to the prosperous and the fashionable were not wholly dictated by the mere snobbish vanity of seeking brilliant connections but were also influenced by the more practical consideration of the number of shares they could buy in his numerous companies. If we have called Samuel Titmarsh the first non-snob in Thackeray's books, it is not, of course, because there were no figures in earlier stories with respect to whom the issue of snobbery did not arise. But with Titmarsh the emphasis is definitely put on his lack of snobbery in situations where the average person might have been expected to display it. The yound lad from the country who became acquainted with such fashionable people, by a series of chance incidents connected with the diamond pin given him by his Aunt Hoggarty, was just as natural and unabashed in the presence of the haughty "nobs", as his friends called them, as in his own village. When he was taken for a drive by the eccentric Lady Drum and was asked who the "ojous vulgar wretch" was who had stared at them so, he replied loyally that the man was his friend and that " a better or more kind-hearted fellow does not exist" (p. 23). Whereupon the gentle Lady Jane remarked, "You are quite right to stand up for your friends". And when the Right Honourable Mr. Preston, who was horrified to find this young nobody in the company of his relatives, tried to snub him, and ironically invited him to dinner, the young man gave him a lesson in 76

politeness by accepting the invitation, to the great disconcertment of the honourable gentleman, only to speak out his mind when they had reached the Preston doorstep: " W h e n you came up and asked who the devil I was, I thought you might have put the question in a more polite m a n n e r ; but it wasn't my business to speak. When, by way of a joke, you invited me to dinner, I thought I would answer in a j o k e too, and here I am. But don't be f r i g h t e n e d ; I'm not a going to dine with y o u : only if you play the same joke u p o n other parties — on some of the chaps in our office, for example — I recommend you to have a care, or they will take you at your word." (p. 30.)

It is evident that Thackeray especially liked this intrepid kind of selfrespect and consciously set it up as a contrast to the "cringing haughtiness", as he several times describes it, of the pride based only on the accidents of birth or fortune. When a man possesses this kind of fundamental human dignity, Thackeray is willing to forgive him a little harmless vanity, even of a snobbish sort. Titmarsh is h u m a n : he frankly confesses to having enjoyed the little sensation caused at his office by the reports of his adventures in the fashionable West End and even to having connived in an innocent way at the news being spread about. These little concessions to human weakness keep him from appearing something of a prig, and show also that Thackeray was not setting up as his ideal of non-snobbery some supernatural indifference to the sentiments moving most human beings, but was merely demanding that in the essentials a man should respect himself too much to let himself be seriously affected by the awe of titles unconnected with personal merit. Miscellaneous

occurrences of the

theme.

In addition to the works discussed above, which represent the greater part of Thackeray's work in fiction up to the great novels, there are, if this were not sufficient testimony to his preoccupation with snobbery from the very beginnings of his writing career, numbers of minor contributions to magazines, chiefly to Punch, which show how keen an eye he had for spying out anything resembling snobbery in the daily life of his period. He was especially merciless to snobbery connected with literature, whether found in the public's weakness for titled authors, in the absurdities of "high-life" novels, or in the authors' toadying to the socially influential. In The Fashionable Authoress (1841) 67 he gives an amusing portrait of Lady Fanny Flummery, author of "Pearls of the Peerage", "Beauties of the Baronetage" and similar works, who has made a great success by writing novels in which no-one under a marquis ever by any chance appears, who makes up for a total ignorance of style by interlarding her works with "fearful quotations from the French, fiddlefaddle 67 Yellow plush Papers Heads of the People.

etc., pp. 309—321, originally written f o r K e n n y Meadows'

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extracts from Italian operas, German phrases fiercely mutilated, and a scrap or two of bad Spanish", and who gains the favour of the editors and bookreviewers by supplying them with invitations to the houses of the titled people she knows. And it is on the editors who accept such invitations and let themselves be influenced by them that Thackeray's indignant mockery falls with still greater force than on Lady Fanny herself. "The woman herself is not so blameable; it is the silly people who cringe at her feet that do the mischief, and, gulled themselves, gull the most gullable of publics" (p. 321). Timmins, her editor, had been noted in his younger days for a "fierce republicanism" and for his "utter scorn and hatred of a bloated, do-nothing aristocracy". But only some two years after his rise to the editorship of one of the big daily newspapers his friends discovered that, having met a lord who was polite to him, he was "completely bound over, neck and heels, to the blood-thirsty aristocrats, hereditary tyrants, etc.". "Timson was from that moment a slave, had his coats made at the West End, cut his wife's relations (they are dealers in marine stores, and live at Wapping), and had his name put down at two clubs". Lady Fanny Flummery was one of those who profitably cultivated the honest man's little weakness, to the great advantage of the effusions of her genius. The ruthless portrait he gives of the editor Augustus Timson is one of the pieces of writing that may have caused Thackeray to feel uncomfortable in his own later days of prosperity and fashionable acquaintances, when people put similar interpretations on his actions. In 1844 a book by James Grant, "The Great Metropolis", stirred Thackeray by "its inflated tone, its indifferent style, doubtful accuracy, and tendency to snobbery", to quote the description of the book given by Spielmann (p. 34), to a parody called "Leaves from the Lives of the Lords of Literature 6 8 ", by the "Moral Young Man". In the notice to the reader Thackeray explains that the Moral Young Man "naturally (and gracefully, as we think) begins with the people of title who adorn the Red Book". What follows is a burlesque review of the works of Lady Blessington, Lord Brougham and Bulwer-Lytton, with flings at the vanities of these aristocratic writers and at the part played in their popularity by their resounding names. In the next issue of Punch Thackeray has found a rich field for his "eye for a snob" in Lady Londonderry's Journal of a Visit to Foreign Courts. The affected use of French in the Journal, the execrable style, and the airs of aristocratic condescension taken by the authoress are mercilessly parodied. When Lady L. complains that few things annoy one more "than the appearance of one's maid by one's bed-side at four o'clock in the morning", "he not only expresses delight with the composition (' one only finds people of fashion ever use one's language in the proper way — does one'), but points out that it must be still more annoying for the maid who must get up at three 6 9 ". But when the noble Lady deplores the 68 69

78

Punch, Jan. 20, 1844 (Spielmann, pp. 34—40). Spielmann, p. 41.

hard necessity under which steamboat travellers labour of being brought "into contact with all sorts and conditions of people" the tone of the article becomes more serious, and Thackeray warns against "this dangerous sort of writing nowadays", this "shuddering at being brought into contact with fellow creatures". In his third Snob Paper he was to return to this passage in Lady Londonderry's Journal in treating of the "Influence of the Aristocracy on Snobs". A n announcement issued by W. H. Ainsworth, upon taking over the editorship of the Monthly Magazine in 1845 stirred Thackeray to serious protest in the name of the dignity of men of letters. "Mr. Ainsworth 'on whom the Editorship of the New Monthly Magazine has devolved', parades a list of contributors to that brilliant periodical, and says he has secured the aid of several writers ' e m i n e n t not only for talent, BUT FOR H I G H RANK'. A r e they of high rank as authors, or in the Red B o o k ? Mr. Ainsworth can't mean that the readers of his Magazine care for an author because he happens to be a lord — a flunkey might — but not a gentleman who has any more brains than a fool. A literary gentleman who respects his calling doesn't surely mean to propitiate the public by saying, 'I am going to write for you, and — Lord Fitzdiddle is going to write too'. Hang it, man, let him write — write and be — successful, or write and be — unsuccessful, according to his merits. But don't let us talk about high rank in the r e p u b l i c of letters — let us keep that place clear. Publishers have sought for lordlings, we know, and got them to put their unlucky names to works which they never wrote, but don't let men of letters demean themselves in this way . . . " (Punch, July 5, 1845 — Melville, p. 167.)

A n opportunity for inveighing against the alleged servility of the English was given Thackeray by an episode in 1845 involving the Morning Post, then Punch's great e n e m y 7 0 , to w h o m the Duke of Wellington had written a very haughty note about an error of some reporter's, the tone of which Thackeray thought the newspaper should have resented. A n announcement telling of Victor Hugo's being made a Peer of France, which appeared about the same time, caused h i m to contrast the English with the French attitude towards men of letters and journalists: Louis P h i l i p p e makes Victor Hugo a Peer of France, and the Duke of Wellington calls the Morning Post a liar. In France the Journalists think that the King has bestowed a deserved h o n o u r on one of their profession. In England, the Morning Post feels m u c h obliged because the Duke accuses it of falsehood. In return for this compliment, the brave Briton cringes down to the testy old nobleman's f e e t . . . In France, then, a literary man is made a D u k e ; in England he is happy to be kicked by one. ("Literary News", Punch, April 26, 1845, Spielmann, p. 108.)

In addition to snobbery in literary matters, which Thackeray, jealous of the honour of his profession, resented with special sharpness, many 70 About a year later we find in Punch a reference to the Morning Post, " o u r flunkey c o n t e m p o r a r y " that "never chronicles a marriage in high life that it is not an inch the taller for it", which sounds as if it came f r o m Thackeray's biting pen. (Punch, vol. X, p. 71.)

79

instances of toadyism or presumption in other fields caught his sharp eye. A specimen of turf snobbery he found in a statement m a d e by B a r o n Alderson in 1844 with reference to a notorious racing scandal of the day. Alderson addressed his remarks to "noblemen and gentlemen of r a n k " and pointed to this episode as a lesson to them on the natural consequences of their consorting with persons below them in station. Thackeray takes the opportunity to remark that noblemen consort with blackguards in order to m a k e money out of them, and that noblemen and gentlemen are not necessarily convertible terms 7 1 . " 'Avoid the Turf blackguards', says the Baron. 'My son', I say to you, 'avoid the Turf gentlemen, too'." Most revolting of all he finds the mixture of snobbery with Church matters. In a note headed "Genteel C h r i s t i a n i t y 7 2 " he comments on a notice in the Court Circular to the effect that " T h e B i s h o p of London held a confirmation on Maundy Thursday of the j u v e n i l e nobil i t y a n d g e n t r y e t c . " " W h o " , he asks, " c a n say the church is in danger after t h i s ? " This announcement (or one similar to it) he brought in later in a prominent place in the chapter on Clerical Snobs in the Book of Snobs. " W h e n I r e a d " , he there writes, "that the Right R e v e r e n d the L o r d Charles J a m e s a d m i n i s t e r e d the rite of Confirmation to a p a r t y o f t h e j u v e n i l e n o b i l i t y at the C h a p e l R o y a l , — as if the Chapel Royal were a sort of ecclesiastical A l m a c k ' s , and y o u n g p e o p l e were to get ready for the next world in little exclusive genteel k n o t s of the aristocracy, who were not to be d i s t u r b e d in their j o u r n e y thither by the company of the vulgar, . . . it s e e m s to m e to b e the m o s t o d i o u s , m e a n , and disgusting part of that odious, mean, and disgusting p u b l i c a t i o n , the Court Circular; and that Snobbishness is therein carried to quite an a w f u l pitch. What, gentlemen, can't we even in the Church a c k n o w l e d g e a r e p u b l i c ? T h e r e , at least, the H e r a l d ' s College itself might allow that we all of us have the s a m e p e d i g r e e , and are direct descendants of E v e and A d a m , whose inheritance is d i v i d e d amongst u s . "

One of the most amusing pieces of fun in Thackeray's crusade against snobbery was inspired by a muddled wedding announcement in which the families concerned h a d apparently been at great pains to bring in mention of every single illustrious relative the bridal pair possessed, regardless of clarity. A troubled correspondent is supposed to write to Punch f o r elucidation, and reports that from the announcement he can only conclude "1st. T h a t his late Majesty, William IV, was the only son of L a d y H a r r i e t F l e m y n g ; 2nd. T h a t L a d y H a r r i e t was the only daughter of H a m i l t o n F l e m y n g and C a p t . W i l l i a m G y l l of the 2nd L i f e G u a r d s ; 4th. T h a t H . B . T h o m a s o n , Esq., was at once the only son of S i r E. and L a d y T h o m a s o n , and the youngest daughter of Sir J o h n and L a d y P e n h o r n . " " W h a t , sir, I a s k " the correspondent continues, " a r e we to conclude f r o m these astonishing s t a t e m e n t s ? If true, they strike at the very roots of every g e n e a l o g i c a l tree in the k i n g d o m ; if incorrect, they are likely woefully to m i s l e a d many a f a m i l y of that aristocracy . . . of which I am p r o u d to write myself a m e m b e r . " 71

72

80

S p i e l m a n n , p. 79. Punch, A p r i l 5, 1845 — Spielmann, p. 101.

2. T h e

Book

of

S n o b s (1846/47).

It is clear from the foregoing that Thackeray's decision to write a series of papers on snobbery for Punch grew out of a long preoccupation with the subject. The undignified scramble for social prestige that he saw on all sides, the arrogance and ostentation on the one hand, the lack of honest self-respect, the slavish imitation on the other, the general envying and snubbing and flattering and scheming for something that to him appeared so trivial, stirred him to a protest that could only be partially expressed in the snob-figures he set up for ridicule in his sketches and in the comments he had strewn here and there in all of his works. We can imagine the glee with which he conceived the idea of writing a whole series of articles on this one subject, of making a systematic and thorough attack on this malady of English social life in all its phases. In dealing with the Book of Snobs we are only interested in the kinds of " s n o b b e r y " that would be called by that name today. The other varieties that Thackeray includes because of the different sense the word h a d in his day will as a rule be omitted from mention, to avoid confusion. But since Thackeray was obviously concerned primarily with precisely the modern kind of "snobbery", this limitation cuts out comparatively little of the Book of Snobs taken as a whole. Thackeray mobilizes all the resources of his now rather experienced talent in this concentrated attack on snobbery, ranging with the greatest ease from half-indulgent raillery to the bitterest sarcasm and to outbursts of eloquent indignation. His method is either to make a direct attack on the various institutions of English social life that he considers snobbish or to give character sketches, representative usually of some group or class of snobs, but chiefly of interest because of the masterly individualizing touches. Although it is generally conceded that the character sketches are better than the attacks on institutions — not a surprising fact considering Thackeray's special talents —, to a reader of all of his preceding works they offer less of novelty. T h e improvement in quality is conspicuous, but most of the snobbish types in these papers have their counterparts in one or another of the sketches and short stories that have been reviewed above. The snobs from Thackeray's gallery of rogues reappear as the "raff snobs" in the chapters on "English Snobs on the Continent", on "Military Snobs" etc. Some of these raff snobs would hardly be called snobs today, as for example Captain Raff and Captain Legg, gamblers and cheats who travel about E u r o p e plucking the unwary travellers who fall into their hands. Legg shows marked similarity to Deuceace, and from this we can gather that Deuceace could have been called a snob according to Thackeray's conception of the term, although if one takes the modern sense Fehr and Behmenburg are undoubtedly right in contending that he is not a snob. Alongside of the "rook snobs" are as usual the countless "pigeon snobs", begging to be well plucked by anyone who has distinguished 81

relations, or credibly pretends to them, and most of these are snobs in the f u l l modern sense of the word. Thackeray refuses to be sentimental about the people who lay themselves open to trickery by their own vanity. I n " S n o b b i u m G a t h e r u m " he cites a few cases taken f r o m the newspapers of one week, in which lodging-house keepers and others were taken in by people laying claim to titled relations. It was the "Right Honourable" which baited the hook which gorged all these greedy, simple Snobs. Would they have been taken in by a commoner? What old lady is there, my dear sir, who would take in you and me, were we ever so ill to do, and comfort us, and clothe us, and give us her money and her silver f o r k s ? Alas and alas! what mortal man that speaks the truth can hope for such a landlady?

T h e raff snobs and their shadows, the dupes, are, however, given comparatively little space in the Snob Papers. Another group with which we are already familiar, the Irish snobs, are given almost two f u l l chapters. There is little new material in these chapters, except f o r a new type, the Irish political snob (in the p a p e r on " R a d i c a l S n o b s " , omitted when the p a p e r s were published as the Book of Snobs). L i k e most of Thackeray's political snobs, however, these are called snobs because they are humbugs, and thus are only remotely connected with snobbery in the modern sense. Certain representatives of " Y o u n g I r e l a n d " were in Thackeray's opinion exploiting the Irish grievances without much good taste or much sincerity: A martyr without any persecutors is an utter S n o b ; a frantic dwarf who snaps his fingers . . . under the nose of a peaceable giant, is a Snob. . . . Young Ireland shrieking piteously with nobody hurting him, or waving his battle-axed hand on his battlcmented wall, and bellowing his war-cry of Bug-Aboo — and roaring out melodramatic tomfoolery — and fancying himself a champion and a hero, is only a ludicrous little humbug. (p. 357.)

T h e vulgar parvenu snobs on the order of B a r b e r Cox and J e a m e s , and the shabby genteel types of the humbler variety, like Mrs. Gann, have little p l a c e in the Book of Snobs. Thackeray h a d probably come to look on these types as rather small game, who were moreover subjected to enough general disapproval even without his efforts, and possibly his human sympathies were broadening with his maturer years to a m o r e tolerant understanding of the urge for compensation of some sort or other that was a natural consequence of c r a m p e d lives. In the Book of Snobs all his thunder is saved for the respectable people, with money enough to live pleasant and well-rounded lives, if they would forget their petty rivalries and empty ambitions, and with education enough to " k n o w better". H e did not, however, close his eyes to the prevalence of snobbery all u p and down the social scale: — See how the Poor Snob is aping the Rich S n o b ; how the Mean Snob is grovelling at the feet of the Proud S n o b ; and the Great Snob is lording it over his humble brother. Does the idea of equality ever enter Dive's head? Will it ever? Will the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe (I like a good name) ever believe that Lady Croesus, her next-door neighbour in Belgrave Square, is as good a lady as her G r a c e ?

82

Will Lady Croesus ever leave off pining for the Duchess's parties, and cease patronizing Mrs. Broadcloth whose husband has not got his Baronetcy yet? Will Mrs. Broadcloth ever heartily shake hands with Mrs. Seedy, and give up those odious calculations about Mrs. Seedy's income? Will Mrs. Seedy, who is starving in her great house, go and live comfortably in a little one, or in lodgings? Will her landlady, Miss Letsam, ever stop wondering at the familiarity of tradespeople, or rebuking the insolence of Suky, the maid, who wears flowers under her bonnet, like a lady? ("Snobs and Marriage", p. 448.)

In the low as in the high he sees the same impulses at work, but he has ceased to let himself be influenced by the purely external aggravations of the snobbery of the uneducated, the pettiness of the surroundings, the lack of the veil of good manners. On the contrary, he now sees the crime as intensified by the very education that permits the trivial pretensions of the better classes to be expressed in a manner less obviously vulgar, but that should have taught them what true dignity and true worth are. Parvenus there are in goodly numbers in the Book of Snobs, and his parodies of the manufactured pedigrees of certain newly-arrived families and of the airs of exclusiveness taken by certain successful "Great City Snobs" are very comic, but they are no longer taken from the humble barbers and footmen who are dazzled by sudden wealth and who make themselves ludicrous from sheer ignorance. And he is always careful to make it clear that it is not the newness of wealth or of honours thai makes the pride in them ridiculous. " A well-bred Snob is just as secretly proud of his riches and honours as a parvenu snob who makes the most ludicrous exhibition of them" etc. (p. 313). And when he shows the numerous young people in moderate circumstances who plunge themselves into debt and discontent by aping richer people, he puts a share of the blame for their unhappy fate on the complacent people in the great world who are the first to censure their imprudence. Who misguides them? If the world were more simple, would not those foolish people follow the fashion? Does not the world love Court Guides, and millinery, and plate, and carriages? Read the fashionable intelligence; read the Court Circular; read the genteel novels: . . . (p. 447.)

In spite of the fact, then, that only two of the Snob Papers are labelled "On Respectable Snobs", the great majority of the figures presented in them could be included in that classification. The Club Snobs, Dinner-giving Snobs, Country Snobs, Marriage Snobs, to whom so many chapters are devoted, and who are too numerous to be discussed in detail here — all are testimony to Thackeray's "firm opinion that it is among the R E S P E C T A B L E classes of this vast and happy empire that the greatest profusion of Snobs is to be found" (p. 286). When we turn from the snobbish characters to Thackeray's attack on the institutions he considers snobbish, we must make a distinction between his articles on Military Snobbery, Church Snobbery and the like, in which he merely points out the special varieties of individual snobbery to be found among the representatives of these institutions, and his real 83

attack on institutions themselves. With respect to the former, which are really just a part of this portrayal of varieties of snobbish characters, Thackeray has been subjected to a certain amount of criticism, based on a misunderstanding of his intentions. Anthony Trollope 7 3 , for instance, professes to see in Thackeray's papers on Military Snobs and Church Snobs a sweeping condemnation of the Church and the Army. And this in spite of the fact that Thackeray is at great pains to make it clear that among Churchmen and military men there are snobs and non-snobs and that it was only of the former he is speaking. Trollope is especially unlucky in choosing the Church 7 4 for defense against these supposedly sweeping accusations, for Thackeray's first paper on Clerical Snobs was devoted almost entirely to a generous piece of praise for the many clergymen who lead a life of sacrifice and devotion. He confesses that he turns to the consideration of the few black sheep in the fold with reluctance, for, as he says, " I know this, that if there are some Clerics who do wrong, there are straightway a thousand newspapers to haul up those unfortunates, and cry, Fie upon them, fie upon them! while, though the press is always ready to yell and bellow excommunication against those stray delinquent parsons, it somehow takes very little account of the many good ones — of the tens of thousands of honest men, who lead Christian lives, who give to the poor generously, who deny themselves rigidly, and live and die in their duty, without ever a newspaper paragraph in their honour" (p. 308). It would be difficult to say how, if the subject is not to be tabu altogether, a writer could proceed more discreetly and justly to the criticism of the few clerics who merited, in Thackeray's opinion, the name of snob — the seven Irish bishops, for example, who left such unchristianly large fortunes, or the young curates he saw neglecting their parishes to run after the local nobility, and similar types. And in the articles on Military Snobs he is also careful to make it explicitly clear that he is attacking individuals and not a class as a whole (see especially pp. 300 and 307). There is one side of his study of military snobbery, however, that may be considered a part of his attack on institutions as such, and that is his criticism of the system of promotions in the Army. " I have always admired that dispensation of rank in our country which sets up this lastnamed little creature" (a young Cornet of good family but little ability) "to command great whiskered warriors, who have faced all dangers of climate and battle; which, because he has money to lodge at the agent's, will place him over the heads of men who have a thousand times more experience and desert; and which in the course of time, will bring him all the honours of his profession, when the veteran soldier he commanded has got no other reward for his bravery than a berth in Chelsea Hospital and the veteran officer he superseded has slunk into shabby retirement, and ends his life on a threadbare half-pay." (p. 300.)

The other English institutions and customs Thackeray attacks can 73 T4

84

English Men of Letters, Thackeray, by Anthony Trollope. op. cit. p. 83.

only b e briefly mentioned here. His great bogey is the Court Circular, with its detailed reports of the most trivial occurrences in t h e royal family. Much of his satire centres about the " P e e r a g e " , and similar books of genealogy, which h e calls " t h e Englishman's Bible". H e not only ridicules t h e excessive i m p o r t a n c e these books play i n t h e lives of t h e respectable families of England, but makes f u n of t h e i r m a n y inaccuracies (see the comic genealogy of the de Mogyns family — formerly Muggins — who, according to "Fluke's Peerage", trace t h e i r descent f r o m t h e giant Hogyn Mogyn, p. 290). At another point h e grants a slight a m o u n t of historical interest to t h e Peerage, thus faintly foreshadowing Proust's defense of t h e genealogical preoccupations of t h e snob. There is some good in the Peerage; though De Muggins is not descended from the giant Hogyn Mogyn, though half the other genealogies are equally false and foolish; yet the mottoes are good reading — some of them; and the book itself a sort of goldlaced and liveried lackey to History, and in so far serviceable. ("Club Snobs", p. 461.)

Court etiquette in its more exaggerated f o r m s is another f a v o u r i t e b u t t of his. His f a m o u s instance of the Portuguese P r i n c e who, when h u n t i n g , not only h a d a m a n to load his gun f o r h i m , b u t refused to t a k e t h e loaded gun into his hands until it h a d been h a n d e d to a n o b l e m a n , his equerry, stirs Saintsbury 7 5 , with some reason, to contest Thackeray's assertion t h a t all t h r e e persons involved in this transaction, t h e loader, t h e equerry and t h e Prince, were, f o r t h e t i m e being, snobs. It m a y probably b e assumed, however, t h a t Thackeray was consciously overdoing things a little here, in his ardour against forms of etiquette which exaggerate t h e relationship of mastery and servitude and t h u s m a y b e considered conducive to — if not really symptomatic of — snobbery. Closely connected w i t h this aversion to court etiquette was his objection to t h e institution of t h e "Grandes Charges a la Cour", t h e Ladies of t h e PowderCloset, Grooms in Waiting, etc., positions h e considered as undignified as t h a t of t h a t other bogey of his, t h e useless liveried servants of fashionable households. Similar outworn customs at t h e Universities likewise stir his indignation, such as t h e fact t h a t a lord was given a degree at t h e end of two years, while a commoner h a d to t a k e seven, t h a t some students who were t h e sons of rich gentlemen h a d privileges of various sorts while t h e poorer ones were m a d e conspicuous by having to wear caps w i t h o u t tassels and were k n o w n (in Oxford) as "servitors" — "a very p r e t t y a n d gentlemanly title", is Thackeray's aside. I t was i n these parts of his work t h a t Thackeray laid himself open to t h e most criticism. I t does indeed seem as if at times, in his aversion to etiquette a n d forms, h e did not distinguish between symbols and reality. I n h i s downright way h e does not allow f o r t h e part played in t h e English mentality by a k i n d of traditional piety, a respect f o r symbols of a u t h o r i t y even when t h e individuals representing t h a t authority are not especially 78

Preface

to Book

of Snobs,

p. XX.

85

admirable. At its best this mentality can take a kind of pride in living up to traditional forms of respect without sacrificing a jot of its inner independence — it is an old truth that it is not necessarily the pugnacious democrat, taking pride in refusing the conventional signs of respect to royalty and rank, who actually shows the freest spirit when faced by situations where he has to show real "Zivilcourage", to use the Bismarckian expression. All these finer shades of psychology Thackeray ignores, and it may b e that for his purposes of practical, effective satire, for shaking the English out of a number of outworn habits, this was not necessary. If he had been challenged to defend his position he might have taken the stand that, although by people of exceptionally strong character these forms could be taken for mere forms and nothing else, for the average human being they are psychologically dangerous. The teachings of modern psychologists that habits of outward action are likely to become habits of thought would have confirmed Thackeray, the democrat and liberal, in his distrust of the symbolic forms of subjection and mastery as preserved in these old forms. And in many points in which he called for reform, as in army promotions and customs at the universities, the changes that have actually been made since his time show that his ideas were the formulation of a dissatisfaction to be felt more and more widely by his countrymen as a whole. Thackeray's contributions to the t h e o r y of snobbery are very scanty. H e gives, it is true, a definition of the snob: " H e who meanly admires mean things is a Snob" (B. o. S. p. 269). But although it might have been expected that in such a long study he would have asked himself just what general human or specifically national traits or what historical combination of circumstances were behind all these phenomena which he so vividly describes, he makes little attempt at any systematic analysis of the psychological or historical roots of snobbery. H e once, in passing, expresses the opinion that snobbery has existed in all ages (Introduction), and in general puts the blame on the Middle Ages for creating the distinctions of rank to which the modern snob clings. The "wicked and shameful distinctions" still maintained at the universities are, he says, " a part of the brutal, unchristian, blundering feudal system". Saintsbury, who recognizes the merits of the Book of Snobs in general but makes several well-judged criticisms of certain details, remarks that he would like to examine Thackeray for half an hour on his knowledge of this same feudal system 7 6 , and it is not likely that Thackeray, whose historical scholarship hardly went back farther than the eighteenth century, which he knew well, would have passed the examination very brilliantly. It is not alone that he has little sympathy for the Middle Ages, but he looks at them and judges them wholly from the modern point of view. H e makes no efforts to grasp the different significance the hierarchical social 78

86

Preface, p . X X I .

order h a d in feudal days and in modern E n g l a n d , and for that reason the parallels he draws are of little interest. Similarly, Thackeray makes little attempt to limit the conception of snobbery and to separate it from apparently related h u m a n impulses that m a y arise from quite different sources. H e does not, f o r instance, m a k e very much distinction between the love of money per se and the love of rank and position. A person who sacrifices friends, love, s i m p l e contentment f o r wealth is to him contemptible, a " m e a n admirer of m e a n things", hence a snob, and he does not stop to inquire whether there is a difference between the miser's love of gold for its own sake, and the love of money for the luxury and pleasure it m a k e s possible, or the love of t h e prestige given by great wealth. A touch of the P u r i t a n in h i m m a k e s h i m condemn the excessive love of luxury as well as the love of prestige, and the broad conception he has of snobbery permits him to call these very different things by the same name. When he speaks of " m a m m o n " — "this mammoniacal superstition" is one of his names for snobbery — he is as likely to be thinking of rank and position as of wealth per se. In fact, all of worldliness, which is, again, a much broader matter, he tends to consider snobbish. " F o r what is worldliness but s n o b b e r y ? " he asks (Ch. X I I , p. 312). It must be noted that we are not criticizing Thackeray merely because he called all these things snobbish: he was giving new meaning to the word and could include what he wished. H e was likewise perfectly free to consider both of these things reprehensible, for that is a matter of opinion. B u t he frequently speaks as if the love of rank and prestige and the love of money were interchangeable matters, and thereby does undoubtedly cause a certain confusion of issues. T h e scantiness of Thackeray's consideration of the theoretical side of his subject may be explained in various ways. In the first place the conception of what snobbery is was less stable, less well-defined than now, and consequently did not lend itself so well to excursions into theoretical considerations. In the second place, it is hardly fair to expect of Thackeray learned disquisitions on the sociological or historical background of snobbery, or hair-sharp abstract distinctions, in articles that were after all written f o r a humorous magazine. A n d finally, it is, as B e h m e n b u r g remarks, not the English way to bring such a subject into the philosophical realm, but to k e e p it on the h u m a n plane. A n d if this generalization has to b e qualified by numerous exceptions, in Thackeray's case the national leaning is strengthened by the individual's tastes and special talents; his m i n d was very fine in the realms of intuitive psychology, but when he dealt with abstractions, beyond the simpler f u n d a m e n t a l s of moral and ethical thought, he was in less congenial fields. When we look at the Book of Snobs as a whole, the numerous faults of detail f a d e out in the contemplation of the vivid, h u m a n , effective piece of satire it represents. At a time when the tyranny of the " g e n t e e l " was at its height, Thackeray arose to banter and storm, l a u g h and brow87

beat his contemporaries out of their most cherished prejudices and affectations. T h e immense popularity of his Snob Papers, at the t i m e of their appearance and since, testifies to the fact that he succeeded well in the satirist's first duty, if he is to have any influence: the duty of writing so that his words will b e heard by the people who need the lessons he h a s to give. T h e r e were protests and contradictions, of course, but his contemporaries who disagreed with him were at least put on the defensive about things they would have otherwise continued to take f o r granted, and the m o r e honest among them, were, as one gathers from contemporary criticisms, forced to reconsider their ideals of social culture and to ask themselves how much their conceptions of " t r a d i t i o n " , " b r e e d i n g " , "gentility", and the like, contained of real values, and how much was merely prejudice and dead convention. 3. S n o b b e r y

in T h a c k e r a y ' s

Vanity Fair

mature

work.

(1848).

If we take t h e year 1833, when Thackeray b e c a m e editor of the National Standard, as the beginning of his literary career, Vanity Fair stands at the very m i d d l e of his life of writing. I n tone and m o o d it takes a midway position likewise. B e f o r e Vanity Fair Thackeray h a d only at times and briefly freed himself from his preoccupation with rogues and he dupes, with meanness and grotesque vulgarity; after Vanity Fair rapidly mellows into an attitude of grandfatherly indulgence towards most of the weaknesses of humanity. In this novel, his masterpiece, he hits the h a p p y medium. T h e r e are rogues enough in Vanity Fair, and the shadow side of humanity has perhaps more emphasis than the sunny, but the harshness, erraticness, burlesquery of Thackeray's earlier m a n n e r h a v e given way to a perfectly controlled, sharply cutting irony that h a s not yet been emasculated by the disillusioned sentimentality of the older and wearier Thackeray. A n d his treatment of snobbery, which is one of the chief motors that m a k e the wheels go round in worldly l i f e as he sees it, is m a r k e d by this same quiet mastery. T h e snobbery of his characters is neither glossed over and excused nor railed at. H e seems to h a v e gained more detachment towards the subject than he h a d in the Book of Snobs, and by opposing to it irony rather than indignation h e frees himself f r o m all suspicion of being moved by any personal resentment. T h e inclusive p a n o r a m a of social life presented in Vanity Fair gives us an opportunity to study snobbery in almost more milieus and special forms than in the Book of Snobs itself. At the top Thackeray shows the h a p p y few whose position is almost unchallengeable, taking by preference an attitude of gracious condescension towards the commonalty. " T h e r e is no more agreeable object in life than to see May F a i r folks condescending", he comments (I, p. 146). This graciousness lasts only so long, however, as the lower levels flow in "oily orderliness" (Meredith) in their due sphere; as soon as some m o r e 88

venturous one among them mistakes, like George Osborne, some special instance of bonhomie on travels or on a holiday for an invitation to real intimacy, the icy technique of the snub is brought into play; and when some impertinent upstart of a Becky Sharp threatens to triumph in their own spheres, the women, who are the conservatives among them, put aside all pretence of superior indifference and fight the intruder tooth and nail. Others among these upper circles, the cynics, enjoy watching the comedy and seeing, like Lord Steyne, just how far the meanness of the great majority of the underlings will let them go in tyrannizing and domineering. It is, incidentally, not certain that Lord Steyne should be included among the real snobs. His insolence to the more docile among the commonalty gives him superficially the appearance of a supreme snob, but it is the real power his situation gives him that he enjoys (and that with a cynical recognition of its emptiness) rather than the satisfaction of his amour-propre. And when he sagely discourses to Becky of the vanity of the social triumphs she is striving for (II, p. 139), we know of course that he is not going to renounce his titles and his position in society, but it is, none the less, probable that Thackeray meant these words to represent the old nobleman's genuine conviction. Below this group are all the myriads of "almosts". Those who have birth, but not much wealth, are, like the Bute Crawleys, scheming day and night for inheritances or for rich marriages, not in order to satisfy any unbounded hedonism but to have the wherewithal to assert their position in society. Those who have the wealth but not the birth are, like the Osborne family, similarly scheming for aristocratic marriages, or at least for such rich marriages that they can have a position of unquestioned social dominance in their own rich City circles. Beneath this secondary aristocracy, there are the recently enriched tradesmen's families, best represented in the novel by the Dobbin sisters, snubbed more ruthlessly by the well-established City families than these in their turn by the nobility — the nobles often being forced to politeness by their need of money. Not far below this group is the world of the déclassés, represented by Becky's companions in her days of disgrace, most of them liviag abroad in a tawdry pretence of maintaining their ancient splendour, and themselves conscious of a whole hierarchy of degrees of déclassement. Among these groups we meet again a few of the types of "raff snobs" from Thackeray's earlier works. At a lower level economically, but higher in point of respectability and morals, we see the group of the shabby genteel, represented by the Sedleys after the crash. Living on a pittance that hardly permits of a standard of living above the proletarian, they still have their profound satisfactions and illusions of importance. Thackeray's comments on the Sedleys are close parallels to those he had made about the Canns. I don't think they (the Sedleys) were unhappy. Perhaps they were a little prouder in their downfall than in their prosperity. Mrs. Sedley was always a great person

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for her landlady, Mrs. Clapp . . . The Irish maid Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, her reckless consumption of tea and sugar, occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as the doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and the coachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a housekeeper with a regiment of female domestics — her former household, about which the good lady talked a hundred times a d a y . . . She stepped aside when Mrs. Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious family. She flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's lady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse chaise. (II, pp. 28/29.)

But the account of the Sedleys in their downfall shows a certain progress in tolerance and human understanding over the Shabby Genteel Story. Thackeray sees the pettiness in Mrs. Sedley, and exposes her egotism, but he writes of her with more pity than contempt or indignation. Each of these various groups in the social scale has, too, its own train of parasites. The great man has his Wenhams and Waggs, his flatterers and hangers-on, and hardly a group is so humble that it is not courted at least by some group of tradesmen eager for its patronage, and half confusing their respect with their hope for material gain. A special class of this interested snobbery is represented by the snobbish schools and schoolmasters that Thackeray paints so well. The great Miss Pinkerton, and Georgy Osborne's schoolmaster, Mr. Veal, make sharp distinctions between their pupils according to the size of their father's purse or the social position of their families, and strive to make their curriculum as genteel and classical as possible, in order to captivate parents with social ambitions for their offspring. Their case is parallel to Barry Lyndon's, in that their snobbery and their material interests go hand in hand and are almost impossible to separate. Finally, there is the vicarious snobbery of the servants. We see Sambo and the coachman at Miss Pinkerton's grinning and sneering at Becky's shabby little trunk as they send her off in the coach, we see the servants as jealous of precedence as their masters, the lady's maid envious and resentful at the position of the governess, "half lady, half servant". And the governesses themselves, with the special intensity of their cult of the genteel! We meet Miss Wirt, a figure taken over, name and all, from the Book of Snobs, where her experience with the best families in England and her knowledge of genealogy formed the pride, and the secret intimidation, of the Ponto family ("A visit to some Country Snobs"). Her appearance on the scene in Vanity Fair is brief but characteristic. While poor Miss Swartz sang her three songs, "Miss Wirt and the companion sat by, and conned over the peerage, and talked about the nobility" (I, p. 219). The Irish snobs, too, have their representative, in Mrs. O'Dowd, with her preposterous stories of her Irish home, where the properties were endless and where even the magnolias were as big as "taykettles". But the portrait of the good Colonel's wife, with her kindness of heart making up for all her vulgarity, is a much more charitable one than Thackeray's 90

previous Irish portraits, and suggests that here too Thackeray was learning to be more tolerant, to see certain of the more fanciful varieties of snobbery with humour and not with disgust. In the course of these studies of group snobberies Thackeray presents a certain number of individual portraits of snobs that deserve special attention. But before turning to these psychological studies we must note a few of the themes of a more general nature that recur at frequent intervals in the book. At once binding these different social groups together and forming one of the chief causes of friction between them are the various projects of advantageous marriages that form the framework for so much of the plot in Vanity Fair. Thackeray as usual makes little distinction between marriages for money and marriages for social position per se, but since most of his characters are well-to-do enough not to need a rich marriage out of purely practical considerations, almost all of the cases he presents may be regarded as illustrations of his old theme, "snobbish marriages". As his strongest argument against marriages based purely on ambition he gives warning examples of the unhappiness they bring to the people concerned. Chief among these is the case of Sir Pitt Crawley's wife, Rose, the ironmonger's daughter. Thackeray analyses the "happiness" brought to the lucky woman by her advance in the world. Having broken off a match with a young man of her own circles to marry the vulgar and brutal Sir Pitt, whose only attractions were his name and his property, she naturally has to quarrel with all her relatives and former friends, and is in return subjected to the neglect and snubs of her new relations. " 0 Vanity Fair, Vanity F a i r ! " Thackeray exclaims, "This might have been, but for you, a cheery lass: — Peter Butt und Rose a happy man and wife, in a snug farm, with a hearty family; and an honest portion of pleasures, cares, hopes and struggles: — but a title and a coach-and-four are toys more precious than happiness in Vanity Fair, and if Harry the Eighth or Bluebeard were alive now, and wanted a tenth wife, do you suppose he could not get the prettiest girl that shall be presented this season?" (I, p. 86.)

This conviction that any man or woman, however repulsive, aged or disreputable, can have his choice of mates in Vanity Fair if only he has money or titles enough, is expressed time after time in the novel. Miss Maria Osborne's match with the rich young Bullock of the great City firm is, in its coolness and calculating reasonableness, repugnant enough to Thackeray, with his unconquerable belief in love and romance, but he expresses the opinion that she would have married Bullock's old father with the same readiness. Had orange blossoms been invented then (those touching emblems of female purity imported by us from France, where people's daughters are universally sold in marriage), Miss Maria, I say, would have assumed the spotless wreath, and stepped into the travelling carriage by the side of gouty, bald-headed, bottlenosed Bullock Senior; and devoted her beautiful existence to his happiness with perfect modesty, — only the old gentleman was married already; so she bestowed

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her young affections on the junior partner. Sweet, blooming orange flowers! The other day I saw Miss Trotter (that was) arrayed in them, trip into the travelling carriage at St. George's, Hanover Square, and Lord Methuselah hobbled in after. With what engaging modesty she pulled down the blinds of the chariot — the dear innocent. (I, p. 120.)

In his eagerness to make his point, that neither age, race nor character was an impediment to an advantageous marriage, Thackeray makes that curious blunder of taste and assault on plausibility represented by the Miss Swartz episode. That the woolly-haired mulatto heiress, who in her twenty-three years of life barely learned to write (if someone were by to help with the spelling) and to play three pieces on the piano, could, with her fabulous fortune, have found many an impecunious youth in Vanity Fair ready and willing to marry her, may be granted, but that Mr. Osborne, who had plenty of money to give his son and who was ambitious for him to get out of merely wealthy circles into aristocratic ones, should have insisted so stubbornly on George's marrying her is rather hard to believe. It might not have been so incredible if Thackeray in his illustrations to the book had not drawn the outrageous grinning sketch of her (I, p. 220). The whole affair is a little obviously arranged to give Thackeray a chance to make a crushing arraignment of good society's love of mammon: People in Vanity Fair fasten on to rich folks quite naturally. If the simplest people are disposed to look not a little kindly on great Prosperity (for I defy any member of the British public to say that the notion of Wealth has not something awful and pleasing to h i m ; and you, if you are told that the man next you at dinner has got half a million, not to look at him with a certain interest;) — if the simple look benevolently on money, how much more do your old worldlings regard it! Their affections rush out to meet and welcome money. Their kind sentiments awaken spontaneously towards the interesting possessors of i t . . . And the proof is, that the major part of the Osborne family, who had not, in fifteen years, been able to get up a hearty regard for Amelia Sedley, became as fond of Miss Swartz in the course of a single evening as the most romantic advocate of friendship at first sight could desire. (I, p. 215.)

The passages on worldly marriages are among the few places in the book where Thackeray abandons his ironic detachment and takes to something like preaching. Among the other recurrent themes of the book is that of the newly arrived in society who are "more papal than the Pope". Thackeray takes a malicious pleasure in quoting their superior remarks and then inserting some comment on their own pedigrees. He enjoys painting the condescension of the Crawley girls toward Becky. "At least she gives herself no airs, and remembers that she was our Governess o n c e ! " Miss Violet said, intimating that it befitted all governesses to keep their proper place, and forgetting altogether that she . . . had a coal-scuttle in her scutcheon. (II, p. 64.)

And Wenham, one of Lord Steyne's flatterers, who had to sacrifice all his dearest principles in being polite to his patron's little favourite: 92

However much he might be disposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a staunch old True Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-merchant in the north of England), this aide-de-camp of the Marquis never showed any sort of hostility to Becky. (II, p. 168.)

Becky herself, in her rise, rapidly learns to look with profound scorn on circles that a few years or months before had been her ideal of grandeur and culture. After the collapse of her designs on Jos Sedley, she consoles herself with the thought that, in going to the Crawley's, "at least I shall be with g e n t l e f o l k s and not with vulgar city people" (I, p. 68). Not to speak of the delicious scene where, still only a governess, she so serenely patronizes the conceited young Osborne. B u t here she is acting in self-defence, having had to suffer his clumsy condescension, and what is more she seems herself to be conscious of the humour of the situation. Other good passages are those rallying the naïveté of the conventional ideas of "blood", and the ease with which those who flatter themselves that they can recognize it are deceived. The solemn Sir Pitt, the younger, who is won over by Becky's blandishments, swallows her stories about her ancestors with complete credulity. " B l o o d is everything after all . . . Her mother was a Montmorency" (I, p. 94). Even the worldly-wise Miss Crawley sees evidences of Becky's aristocratic inheritance: " S h e is a Montmorency, Briggs, and blood i s something, though I despise it for my p a r t " (I, p. 158). And the simple James, the sporting son of the Bute Crawleys, is shown by Thackeray with great humour, propounding the deepest theories on the personal advantages which people derive from patrician birth. "Oh as for that," said Jim, "there's nothing like old blood; no, dammy, nothing like it. I'm none of your radicals. I know what it is to be a gentleman, dammy. See the chaps in a boat-racc; look at the fellers in a fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats, — which is it wins? The good-blooded ones." (I, p. 374.)

Of the individual portraits, it is naturally Becky Sharp who interests us most. Herr Behmenburg sets up Becky as the "queen of the snobs". Now there is no denying that Becky is at various points of her career drawn as snobbish. It may be questioned, however, if she can be taken as an especially characteristic example of the snob par excellence. The penniless little nobody, with nothing but her wits to support her, had, in her assault on the strongholds of the prosperous and the well-born, very material advantages to gain, and her career can hardly be compared to that of the people whose ambition is directed exclusively towards social position for its own sake. Objectively considered, of course, she follows the conventional pattern of the upstart snob fairly closely. She fights her way from obscurity to a position where she temporarily is received by the most brilliant London society, she is received at court, she learns in her progress to look down on the spheres that she successively leaves behind her. True to type, she invents high-flown stories about her 93

ancestry: her mother, a French opera dancer, becomes the daughter of a family of noble French émigrés, a family that rises in rank with each succeeding step in Becky's career. But snobbery can only be judged by subjective, not objective, criteria. Becky is in all her career such an intelligent psychologist that we are never quite sure how much she is impelled by the snobbish desire to enjoy the prestige of aristocratic descent and how much by her cool calculation of the effect such claims have on the people she is dependent on for her material well-being. " I have brains", she remarks to herself in meditating on her success, "and almost all the rest of the world are fools" (II, p. 71). She shows this by the fact that, when occasion demands, she can take the other tack, and display a winning frankness about her humble beginnings. " H o w well you s p e a k F r e n c h , " L a d y Grizzel said. " I ought to know i t , " B e c k y m o d e s t l y r e p l i e d , casting down her eyes, " I taught it in a s c h o o l , and my mother was a Frenchwoman." (II, p. 167.)

And Lady Grizzel was "won by her humility, and was mollified towards the little woman". These highly intelligent tactics were something that a died-in-the-wool snob would have had an extreme repugnance to employing. It is something, for instance, of which Meredith's Countess de Saldar, whose career reminds one much of Becky's, but who was more of a pure snob, would never have been capable 7 7 . Her intelligence prevents her, furthermore, from the true snob's blind adoration of those in a superior rank of life. The few girlish notions she had acquired from novels about the splendour of all noblemen are quickly cast aside (I, p. 77 — letter to Amelia). Her strength, in fact, lies in her not being in the least impressed by coronets and stars and garters. She acts with great success on the theory that a lord is just as easy to cajole and wind around a clever woman's finger as any ordinary mortal. It is this that makes her attractive to Lord Steyne, weary of the spiritless docility of his flatterers. Becky can appreciate and even at times envy the quiet dignity of the well-established, but is not at a loss to explain it. "It's all the influence of a long course of Three per Cents", she remarks to herself, thus anticipating the theories of Meredith's Colney Durance on the relation between the Consols and virtue 7 8 . " I t isn't difficult to b e a country gentleman's w i f e , " R e b e c c a thought. " I think I c o u l d be. a good w o m a n if I h a d five thousand a-year. I c o u l d d a w d l e a b o u t in the nursery, and count the apricots on the wall . . . I c o u l d a s k o l d w o m e n a b o u t their r h e u m a t i s m s , and o r d e r half-a-crown's worth of s o u p for the p o o r . I shouldn't m i s s it m u c h , out of five t h o u s a n d a-year." ( I I , p. 70.)

Becky is a feminine counterpart of Barry Lyndon, half adventuress and half snob. In the early stages of her career there is little that may 177 18

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S e e b e l o w , p p . 131 ff. S e e One of our Conquerors,

C h a p . 23.

be pointed out as pure snobbery. Her determination to marry well was the only choice open to her if she wished to escape from a life of petty drudgery and humiliations. If she had to choose, in a husband, between social prestige and wealth, she would probably have chosen the latter. It is highly unlikely that she would have married Rawdon Crawley only for the sake of his good family, if she had not definitely counted on his winning over his rich old aunt. And in her early married life, the pretentious train of life she maintains, which would seem to point to snobbery, is just a part of the "art of living on nothing a year", an art which she admirably understood and a primary principle of which is that one can live on less if one is extravagant: that the only way to have unlimited credit is to be seen in fine carriages and with fine company. It is only in the days of her success that she begins to be dazzled by the immaterial charms of social position for its own sake. After she had been taken up by the best people she played with some zest the role of the great lady. She was caught by Lord Steyne putting the cards of his august family uppermost in her card plate, at which her patron "grinned, as this old cynic always did at any naive display of human weakness" (II, p. 137). She cut the dashing ladies of somewhat damaged reputation who had hitherto been her only feminine companions in Vanity Fair. And after her presentation at court "there was no more loyal heart than Becky's"; she bought a large portrait of the king, bored her friends with tales of his charm and urbanity, and, when the court went into mourning, always wore black. "She got up the genteel with amazing assiduity, readiness and success", Thackeray says of her at this stage of her career, adding that "even our Becky had her weakness" (II, p. 132). This last remark is significant. It is as a "weakness" that Thackeray presents Becky's snobbish period. The shrewd, vivid, practical Becky of the years of battle and intrigue suffers something of a diminution when she begins to conform to the pattern of the conventional, respectable woman of the world. Her vitality, the resourcefulness and unscrupulousness with which she set about gaining her ends, cited by Behmenburg as support for his theory of English snobbery as a kind of "vitalism", are more closely bound up with her character of adventuress than with her snobbery. That the adventuress in her is, furthermore, the stronger element is shown by the fact that she soon tires of her gentility. Her success excited, elated and then bored her. . . . Becky's former acquaintances hated and envied h e r ; the poor woman herself was yawning in spirit. " I wish I were out of it," she said to herself. " I would rather be a parson's wife, and teach a Sunday School than this." (II, p. 165.)

The same thing happens again laboriously built up a minence, in the second-rate she once more found herself

to her after her downfall when, after having position of respectability and even of procircles where her ambitions now centred, "dying of weariness" (II, p. 323), and was 95

m o r e relieved than disappointed when b a d luck drove her f r o m these circles, too. T o the l i f e of B o h e m i a , to which she was reduced after this last reverse, she took, Thackeray tells us, " n o t u n k i n d l y " (II, p. 323). T h e continual u p s and downs of life in the demi-monde, the alternations of splendour and misery, the uncertainty and the adventure, satisfied a profounder side of her nature than all her brilliant gentility as the successf u l Mrs. Rawdon Crawley in London society. P e r s o n a l t r i u m p h s were the breath of Becky's life, but she was not true snob enough to enjoy the quieter and more enduring satisfaction of p o s i t i o n . S h e could not content herself, like L a d y Gorgon and Thackeray's other true snobs, with a lifetime spent in placidly despising her neighbours. Of the other individual snob portraits in the novel, Miss Crawley may b e mentioned as a new type in Thackeray's gallery. T h e strong-minded old woman of the world who professes to be a great republican, but who reverts to the prejudices of her circle as soon as her own social advantages, or those of her f a m i l y , are at stake, is depicted with considerable humour. T o poor A m e l i a she condescends with overpoweringly patronizing benevolence, with her companion B r i g g s she is ruthless, " 'What could L a d y Southdown m e a n by leaving a card upon y o u , I wonder, Miss Briggs', said the republican Miss C r a w l e y " (I, p. 366). She is at first immensely taken by Becky, who knew how to amuse the godless old lady. "What is birth, my d e a r ? " she would say to Rebecca — " L o o k at my brother P i t t ; look at the Huddlestones, who have been here since Henry I I ; look at poor Bute at the parsonage; — is any one of them equal to you in intelligence or breeding? Equal to y o u — they are not even equal to poor dear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler. You, my love, are a little paragon — positively a little jewel. — Y o u have more brains that half the shire — if merit had its reward, you ought to be a Duchess — no, there ought to be no duchesses at all — but you ought to have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as my equal in every respect; and — will you put some coals on the fire, my d e a r ; and will you pick this dress of mine, and alter it, you who can do it so w e l l ? " So this old philanthropist used to m a k e her equal run of her errands, execute her millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels, every night. (I, p. 109 f.)

Moreover, as all readers of Vanity Fair will remember, when her equal dared to m a r r y her nephew, the old lady had hysterics about this mésalliance with " a little n o b o d y " , took to her bed and disinherited the unlucky Rawdon. Another good psychological study is Mr. Osborne, in w h o m Thackeray has shown the inner conflict in a rich merchant, proud of his wealth and yet uncertain of himself in society, craving to be accepted by the aristocracy, and yet resenting their prestige. Osborne recalls Mr. B r o u g h , of the Great Hoggarty Diamond, but he is at once more of a blatant snob, and less the hyprocritical Puritan. Whenever (Mr. Osborne) met a great man he grovelled before him, and mylorded him as only a free-born Briton can do. He came home and looked out his history in the Peerage; he introduced his name into his daily conversation; he bragged about his lordship to his daughters. He fell down prostrate and basked in him as a Neapolitan beggar does in the sun. (I, p. 131.)

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At the same time he gets a secret satisfaction out of thinking that he is richer, and consequently more powerful, than many of these aristocrats. "You shan't want, Sir," (he says to his son, who is leading an extravagant life in West E n d circles). " T h e British merchant's son shan't want. My guineas are as good as theirs . . . I don't grudge money when I know you're in good society, because I k n o w good society can never go wrong. There's no pride in me. I was a h u m b l y b o r n m a n —- but you have h a d advantages. Make a good use of them. Mix with the young nobility. There's many of 'em who can't spend a dollar to your guinea, my boy." (I, p. 132.)

His resemblance to Mr. Brough, which is seen from the above quotation, also appears in the affected humility of his address to the rich Miss Rhoda Swartz (I, p. 215). The natural consequence of his upbringing of his son is that George despises him. "Ours is a ready-money society," (George says to Amelia). " W e live among b a n k e r s and big-wigs, and be hanged to t h e m ; and every man, as he talks to you, is jingling h i s guineas in his pocket. T h e r e is that jackass F r e d Bullock is going to marry Maria — there's Goldmore, the East India d i r e c t o r ; there's Dipley, in the tallow trade — o u r trade," George said, with an uneasy laugh and a blush. "Curse the whole pack of money-grubbing vulgarians! I feel ashamed in my father's great stupid parties. I've been accustomed to live with gentlemen and men of the world and fashion, Emmy, not with a parcel of turtle-fed tradesmen." (I, P. 214.)

Osborne himself learns to distrust and resent the very development in his son's career that he had spent his life to further. His habit of tyrannizing over his children, nourished by the rich man's sense of power, deepens the tragic cleft between the two generations, and Osborne's bitterness is increased by his uneasy sense that his son is superior to him in breeding. In the battle between Osborne and George about the latter's engagement to Amelia, George enrages the old man, who had been trying to bully him by threatening to make him a beggar, by his insolent but quiet remark, "I'm a gentleman though l a m your son, sir". Whenever t h e lad assumed his haughty manner, it always created either great awe or great irritation in the parent. Old Osborne stood in secret terror of his son as a better gentleman than h i m s e l f ; and perhaps my readers may have rem a r k e d in their experience of this Vanity Fair of ours, that there is no character which a low-minded man so m u c h mistrusts as that of a gentleman. "My father d i d n ' t give m e the education you have had. If I had kept the company s o m e f o l k s have had through m y m e a n s , perhaps my son wouldn't have any reason to brag, sir, of his s u p e r i o r i t y and W e s t E n d a i r s " (these words were uttered in the elder Osborne's most sarcastic tones). (I, p. 223.)

An enumeration of all the snobs in the novel would be idle, since it would include practically the whole dramatis personae. There are, however, a few figures in the book who are not snobs. Chief among them is undoubtedly the good Major Dobbin. This side of his character is revealed in just a few touches. At Pumpernickel (Weimar), he is profoundly amused at Jos Sedley's delight at the attentions of that aristocratic diplomat, Tapeworm. 97

Dobbin laughed in his sleeve, like a hypocrite as he was, when he found by the knowing air of the Civilian and the off-hand manner in which the latter talked about Tapeworm Castle, and the other members of the family, that Jos had been up already in the morning, consulting his travelling Peerage. (II, p. 304.)

In the scene at the theatre with Amelia's son, Dobbin gives the boy a little object-lesson in non-snobbery. One day, taking him to the play, and the boy declining to go into the pit because it was vulgar, the Major took him to the boxes, left him there and went down himself to the pit. He had not been seated there very long, before he felt an arm thrust under his, and a dandy little hand in a kid-glove squeezing his arm. George had seen the absurdity of his ways, and come down from the upper regions. (II, p. 273.)

Amelia, too, in her gentle and ineffectual way, is so unworldly that she is not snobbish (for if worldliness does not necessarily include snobbishness, at least the lack of worldliness is likely to exclude it). When Amelia begins to go out in society again after her long eclipse, she is bewildered and estranged by the "faint fashionable fiddlefaddle and feeble court slipslop" she hears on all sides, and by the patronizing efforts of her genteel new friends to " f o r m " her (II, p. 291). But her lack of snobbery is, like so much about her, chiefly negative, and she certainly seems to have done nothing to prevent her young son from growing up as a most promising little snob. One other figure must be mentioned among the non-snobs, and that is, oddly enough, the old Sir Pitt Crawley. H e cares only for his eternal law-suits, for his money, and for his low pleasures, and feels much happier in the company of servants and tavern-keepers than of his genteel relations. His first marriage, with the daughter of the noble house of Binkie, made at the desire of his family, had confirmed his taste for low l i f e ; he told his wife that she was "such a confounded quarrelsome highbred j a d e that when she died he was hanged if he would ever take another of her sort" (I, p. 85). His marriage to the ironmonger's daughter and his proposal to Becky testify to his sincerity in this resolution, and in all his other actions he lives up to all that the most rabid democrat could demand of him. His figure seems to show that Thackeray conceives of an inferior kind of human character that is even beneath snobbery. The

History

of Pendennis

(1850).

In Vanity Fair Thackeray's attitude towards snobbery was essentially the same as in the Book of Snobs. The issues were, with few exceptions, clear-cut, the characters were either snobs or non-snobs and the author's praise or blame apportioned out accordingly. In Pendennis, his next novel, we find him interesting himself in the more problematic regions of the subject. He turns to characters in which tendencies to snobbery are in conflict with many other, often quite opposite, qualities, and, after so many fulminations against mercenary and ambitious marriages, he gives 98

ihe otlier side consideration by showing the equal dangers of hasty and imprudent marriages. Among the minor characters, to be sure, there are a number of snob figures quite in the spirit of his previous work. We meet again Wagg, the wit and sycophant, with "the soul of a butler who had been brought from his pantry to make fun in the drawing-room", who found nothing in the world more suitable for witticism than other people's poverty (II, Ch. IV, p. 6 2 ) 7 9 ; we recognize likewise old acquaintances in Archer (III, 14, pp. 186 f.), with his inexhaustible and wholly inaccurate store of information on the private affairs of the aristocracy (cf. Jawkins in the Book of Snobs), and in Blondel, the grandson of a breeches-maker and son of a money-lender, who is so severe on parvenus and remarks with respect to the Claverings, "What a shame it is that those low people should have money at a l l " (II, 15, p. 335). A rather new type, but related to Timmins of the "Fashionable Authoress", is given in the Bacons and Bungays, rich publisher snobs and their families, vulgar, ignorant and naively ambitious in a social way, a type that Thackeray was to use again in the Mugfords of

Philip.

Of the main characters, Major Pendennis is the most conspicuous exponent of the snobbish rule of life. T h e great question is whether we shall regard the Major as the snob par excellence, and shall, as Behmenburg does (op. cit. pp. 123 ff.), take his philosophy of life as the snob's credo, or whether we shall not rather see in him a mixture of two types, the snob and the man of the world. There are at any rate distinctly two sides to the Major's character, the one comprising his vanity and his adoration of everything fashionable and aristocratic, and the other side which makes of him a shrewd old realist with a keen sense for practical values. This latter part of the Major's character naturally supplies Behmenburg with 6ome support for his conception of the snob as a person with a "respect for f a c t s " and with practical after-thoughts in his adoration of aristocratic relations; and it must be admitted that, of all the evidence Behmenburg presents for his thesis, the Major supplies the most plausible. He is undoubtedly a great snob, and he is also, as said before, in many respects a very shrewd and practical realist. As in the case of Barry Lyndon and Becky Sharp, however, it is possible to draw a line between the pure snobbery in his character and certain other extraneous elements, and when we do this we find in the Major two characters that are logically in conflict (although in human character they are often found together), and we find furthermore that these two sides of his character are shown by Thackeray as making a very different impression on the Major's companions in the novel. By his snobbery he makes himself laughed at by the people of insight, such as Warrington and L a u r a B e l l ; by his frank worldliness he arouses in these people disapproval, too, but of a different k i n d : not so much contempt and ridicule as the antipathy ™ Tauchnitz Edition, 1850.

99

growing out of the two ways of looking at life, the idealistic and the materialistic; whereas in the people who, like the younger Pendennis, have themselves leanings towards a sceptical materialism, this side of his character excites a certain amount of admiration. Most readers have found the Major rather sympathetic, and Thackeray himself seems to have had something of a liking for him. This of course would not in itself prove that the Major was not wholly a snob •— it might merely mean that snobbery in certain forms can be attractive. But when we have separated the two parts of the Major's character, it will, I think, be found that what is attractive in the Major is to be attributed more to his character of man of the world than of snob. In order to keep the two types distinct, it will perhaps be useful to sketch briefly what may be taken as the type of the man of the world who is not a snob. The man of the world is as a rule a hedonist and a lover of the aesthetic values that may be called "social culture". On this latter side, the type may, in its extreme forms, approach that of the dandy. The man of the world finds more than the snob's gratified vanity in being in society; he loves luxury and pleasure, and he associates with wealthy and aristocratic circles because it is only in an atmosphere of wealth and leisure that he can satisfy these tastes, and because in these circles he is free of hampering bourgeois prejudices. He is likely to be solicitous about his own social prestige because, like the "Hochstapler", he is shrewd enough as a psychologist to see the advantages accruing f r o m the good opinion of one's neighbours. But he does not, like the snob, seek this prestige as a value in itself, nor does he necessarily have any special respect for the possessors of wealth and rank as personalities, in spite of the fact that for practical reasons they are his chosen companions. The man of the world, the dandy, and the "Hochstapler" are in actual life probably seldom found in full purity. All three types have in common that, since they find either their pleasure or their profit in the higher social circles, they are, when not capable of living up to their philosophy of life in full, peculiarly susceptible to snobbery. Thackeray has drawn a number of men (and women) of the world, in varying degrees of trueness to type. Lord Steyne is probably the one least tinged by snobbery. Miss Crawley is a mixed type, as are most of the strong-minded worldly old women on her pattern, such as Lady Kew (Newcom.es) and the Baroness Bernstein (Virginians). In Arthur Pendennis Thackeray makes a definite attempt, as we shall see, to separate the two types, to show a sceptical worldliness without snobbery. The comparison of Major Pendennis to Barry Lyndon is suitable in more than one respect. I n his well-bred way, the Major was himself also something of a parasite on society. Without descending to deceptions, like the Hochstapler, or even to any of the servilities of Thackeray's tufthunting snobs, the old gentleman knew how to draw very material advantages out of his brilliant social relations, and the miraculous way he 100

managed to lead a comfortable, even luxurious existence on his half-pay is a study in the usefulness of possessing a serene egotism and the philosophic doctrine that a man could be "so poor that he couldn't afford to know a poor man", as the Major worded it. H e is engagingly frank about these matters. "Did you see that dark blue brougham?" (he asks Arthur) " . . . I t is Sir Hugh Trumpington's . . . Well, that brougham is mine if I choose, between four and seven. Just as much as if I jobbed it from Tilbury's at thirty pound a month . . . That is the benefit of knowing rich men; — I dine for nothing, Sir; — I go into the country, and I'm mounted for nothing. Other people keep hounds and gamekeepers for me. Sic vos non vobis, as we used to say at Grey Friars, h e y ? " (II, 15, p. 228.)

His advice to Pen about choosing a wife is of equally practical nature: "Marry a woman with money. I've told you before it is as easy to get a rich wife as a poor one; and a doosed deal more comfortable to sit down to a well-cooked dinner, with your little entrées nicely served, than to have nothing but a damned cold leg of mutton between you and your wife." (II, 16, p. 243.)

These practical views are not, strictly speaking, snobbish. We can therefore not agree with Behmenburg when he quotes such passages as formulations of the snob's "Lebensanschauung". At most one could say that such considerations may sometimes lead to snobbery, in that the idea of the practical advantages to be gained from wealthy and aristocratic acquaintances is unconsciously assimilated to the p r e s t i g e of such acquaintances; or, on the other hand, that such views are sometimes merely the "rationalization" of snobbish impulses. Whichever of these two hypotheses may be true in the Major's case, Thackeray makes it clear that alongside of his practical worldliness the Major was also a snob. Beside the material advantages he receives from his brilliant friends, he derives profound satisfactions of vanity. When in temporary exile at Fairoaks during the London season, he longs to get back and "sun himself in the glances of Dukes and Duchesses" (I, 16, p. 212), and he enjoys finding his name in the newspapers by the side of the aristocratic leaders of society. The most conspicuous form his snobbery takes is his delight in recounting long tales of intimate trifles concerning the aristocracy, whenever he is among people who will be impressed by them. And it is in yielding to this weakness that the Major, usually so good a psychologist, often lays himself open to ridicule. Even the innocently provincial Mrs. Pendennis is "dimly disposed toward laughter" (I, p. 107) at some of these tales, and Pen himself, much as he is under the influence of the Major's worldly counsels, sometimes suspects that his uncle is "falling into the thwaddling state" (II, p. 228). As for Laura, the strongest character among the women in the novel, she delights in drawing out the old man's foible. Laura had plenty of humour and honesty; and these two caused her to have on her side something very like a contempt for the old gentleman. It delighted her

101

to draw out his worldliness, and to make the old habitué of clubs and drawingrooms tell his twaddling tales about great folks . . . " ( I l l , 10, p. 132.)

The Major's snobbery is further brought out by his attitude towards his own family and its social position. Severe as the Major was about other people's pedigrees, he could endure no rallying on the point of his own ancestors. He was always irritated when reminded that his brother, who had founded the family's position by setting up as a country gentleman, had begun his life as a country doctor and apothecary. And he stubbornly professed his belief in the more than doubtful ancestral history of the Pendennises to which this brother had rather arbitrarily laid claim (see III, p. 240). When his nephew wanted to marry an actress, he spoke of the mésalliance as if it were a question of a young duke, and as if the nation had an interest in preventing the match. "Why are there no such things as lettres-de-cachet — and a Bastille for young fellows of good family?" he exclaims, and Thackeray comments drily, "The Major lived in such good company that he might be excused for feeling like an Earl" (I, 104). The Major is thus not free of the s e l f - d e c e p t i o n which, as later examples will show, is an unfailing mark of the typical upstart snob. The two sides of the Major's character are sometimes in direct conflict with each other. His respect for great names and pedigrees often has to cede to his liking for more material advantages. In discussing Harry Foker's marriage he remarks: "Not a bad coup of Lady Rosherville's, that . . . I should say that young Foker won't have less than about fourteen thousand a year from the brewery, besides Longwood and the Norfolk property. I've no pride about m e , Pen. 1 like a man of birth, certainly, but dammy, I like a brewery which brings in a man fourteen thousand a year; hey, P e n ? " (II, 19, p. 278.)

We have said that there is a snobbery of wealth as of birth, but in the circles the Major moved in and whose ideas he had acquired, wealth without birth had only material attractions, not prestige, so that such ideas can hardly be called a part of his snobbery. He is also disposed to excuse any lack of ancestors, or breeding, or moral respectability if, as in the case of the disreputable Clavering, he can say of a man, "He has a very good cook" (II, 23, p. 329). His realism even leads him to have a certain respect for talent, if it is successful. "We are grown doosid republican", he tells Blanche Amory. "Talent ranks with birth and wealth now, begad; and a clever man with a clever wife may take any place they please" (II, 23, p. 340). In Arthur Pendennis, the Major's protégé and the hero of the novel, Thackeray gives a gently ironic study in the snobbery of adolescence, and shows it being gradually transformed into a philosophic worldliness influenced by the Major's views, but differing from them by being, precisely, less snobbish. The "young prince of Fairoaks", reared, in a small town in which his family had the leading position, by an adoring mother who had no 102

worldly ambitions for herself but whose reverence for her husband made her share his belief in the ancient and honourable descent of the Pendennises and consequently in the position of consequence due to her son, grew up to have a naively exaggerated idea of his own importance. The fundamental amiability of his character, coupled with the very wholeheartedness of this conviction, made his sense of importance reveal itself not by arrogance and assumption but by a good-natured affability towards the less fortunate rest of the world. "He spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Rincer with that sort of good nature with which a young Prince addresses his father's subjects; never dreaming that those 'bonnes gens' were his equals in life" (I, 3, p. 45). In London he followed his democratic friend Warrington to the latter's favourite Bohemian haunts, but here too he was conscious of condescending, although he did it with good grace. He was considerably younger, and therefore much more pompous and stately than Warrington; in fact a young prince in disguise, visiting the poor of his father's kingdom. They respected him as a high chap, a fine fellow, a regular young swell. He had somehow about him an air of imperious good humour, and a royal frankness and majesty, although he was only heir apparent to two-pence-halfpenny, and but one in descent from a gallypot. If these positions are made for us, we acquiesce in them very easily; and are always pretty ready to assume a superiority over those who are as good as ourselves. Pen's condescension at this time of his life was a fine thing to witness. Amongst men of ability this assumption and impertinence passes off with extreme youth: but it is curious to watch the conceit of a generous and clever lad — there is something almost touching in that early exhibition of simplicity and folly. (II, 9, p. 134.)

If Thackeray is rather tolerant in his judgment of this youthful variety of snobbery, it is because in the points that really count Pen was not a snob. In his time at college, for instance, although he outwardly follows the career of some of Thackeray's "University Snobs", leads an idle and extravagant life, associates with a crowd much richer and more fashionable than himself, and seriously endangers his mother's little fortune by the debts he makes in trying to live as they do, it is done out of a genuine love of gaiety and taste for a large way of living. His noble and fashionable acquaintances were not bought at the price of toadying and of insolent exclusion of the less fashionable, but by the natural attractions of like tastes. He never knew the difference between small and great in the treatment of his acquaintances, however much the unlucky lad's tastes, which were of the sumptuous order, led him to prefer good society. (I, 20, p. 283.)

The sumptuous tastes were to accompany him all through his life, and Pendennis remains, among all Thackeray's heroes, the most worldly. But unlike the Major, he was able to separate worldliness from snobbery in all essential points. While still a comparatively young man, he came to a reasoned acceptance of things as they are, which included a recognition of the practical importance of rank and fortune as assets in the 103

world as then constituted, but remained free of the superstitious admiration of the lucky possessors of these assets which influenced the M a j o r ' s judgments. This disillusioned — but not cynical — worldly philosophy is set forth by Pendennis at some length: " I take the world as it is, and being of it, will not be ashamed of it. . . . Many a patriot of eighteen, many a Spouting-Club orator, would turn the Bishops out of the House of Lords to-morrow, and throw the Lords out after the Bishops, and throw the throne into the Thames after the Peers and the Bench. I s that man more modest than I, who take these institutions as I find them, and wait for time and truth to develop, or fortify, or (if you like) destroy them? An hereditary legislator, who passes his time with jockeys and black-legs and balletgirls, and who is called to rule over me and his other betters because his grandfather made a lucky speculation in the funds, or found a coal or tin-mine on his property, or because his stupid ancestor happened to be in command of ten thousand men as brave as himself, who overcame twelve thousand Frenchmen, or fifty thousand Indians — such a man, I say, inspires me with no more respect than the bitterest democrat can feel towards him. But, such as he is, he is a part of the old society to which we belong: and I submit to his lordship with acquiescence; and he takes his place above the best of us at all dinner parties, and there bides his time. I don't want to chop his head off with a guillotine, or to fling mud at him in the streets. When they call such a man a disgrace to his order; and such another, who is good and gentle, refined and generous, who employs his great means in promoting every kindness and charity, and art and grace of life, in the kindest and most gracious manner, an ornament to his rank — the question as to the use and propriety of the order is not in the least affected one way or other. There it is, extant among us, a part of our habits, the creed of many of us, the growth of centuries, the symbol of a most complicated tradition — there stand my lord the bishop and my lord the hereditary legislator — what the French call t r a n s a c t i o n s both of them, — representing in their present shape mail-clad barons and double-sworded chiefs, (from whom their lordships the hereditaries, for the most part, d o n ' t descend,) and priests, professing to hold an absolute truth . . . ; and of these, I say, I acquiesce that they exist . . . If any one says (as some faithful souls do) that these schemes are for ever, and having been changed and modified constantly are to be subject to no farther development or decay, I laugh, and let the man speak. But I would have toleration for these, as I would ask it for my own opinions; and if they are to die, I would rather they had a decent and natural than an abrupt and violent death." ( I l l , 17, 244/6.)

Warrington, Pendennis' confidant, received this sceptical confession "neither without sympathy nor s c o r n " and in this attitude h e probably represented Thackeray's own feelings at this time. In the few years since writing the Book of Snobs, Thackeray h a d been in the world a good deal, h a d tasted some of the pleasures of f a s h i o n a b l e society under f a v o u r a b l e circumstances f o r seeing the best of it, and was probably correcting some of the sweeping generalizations which represented the reaction of his idealism on its first confrontation with the vanity of worldly life. If he had, however, come to realize that not everything in so-called good society was a h u m b u g , and to have some understanding of the p e o p l e who could, without being fops or toadies, accept the ways of Vanity F a i r and find a genuine pleasure in them, still it would probably be a m i s t a k e 104

to assume that he accepted such an attitude as a definite philosophy of life of his own. He could sympathize with it, and the care he takes in expounding Pen's worldly philosophy suggests that in certain moods he perhaps felt the same way, but the equal sympathy with which he gives the point of view of Warrington and Laura Bell, who in their different ways tried to dissuade Pen from his worldliness, shows that it was not an expression of his final convictions. In all Thackeray's later work there are evidences of conflict in his way of looking at life and the world. One side of his nature, the pleasure-loving, sociable, but at bottom sceptical side, urged upon him a philosophy such as Pen's, but the other, the idealistic and "somewhat Puritanical side, longed for more absolute values. This conflict of ideals is given humorous expression in The Newcomes and in Philip, novels in which Pendennis appears as the narrator: the comments on the various events of the stories are given in the form of interpolated conversations between Pendennis on the one hand, and his wife (Laura) and Warrington on the other, Pendennis taking the practical, tolerant, sceptical attitude, and being taken to task by the other two for his "sinful worldliness" (Cf. Philip, I, p. 338). These issues are, it must be remembered, more than the mere question of snobbery versus non-snobbery. Pendennis's social philosophy makes a sharp distinction between the sceptical toleration of conventional standards of rank and the superstitious belief in their real validity, so that even if Thackeray had definitely accepted it as his own he would not have been recanting his earlier beliefs as expressed in the Book of Snobs; (he would, it is true, in that frame of mind probably never have w r i t t e n the Book of Snobs, that being a piece of active agitation not in harmony with Pendennis' attitude of laissez-faire — but that is another matter). It is possible, however, that Thackeray himself did not make this distinction, consciously at any rate. He seems to have had an uneasy sense that this growth of tolerance for the ways of Vanity Fair did indeed, as his detractors asserted, represent something of a defection from his earlier views; at least the air of half-humorous apology with which Pendennis (in whose character many autobiographical traits have been discovered) is made to report on his doings in social life, in the later novels, sounds like a slightly shame-faced confession on Thackeray's part. The same attempt at finding a middle way, which dominates the character studies in this novel, is to be found in the main theme of the book: the problem of worldly marriages. The rambling plot of Pendennis hinges on the various projects of marriage that the hero entertains at various points of his career. His first love, the actress Fotheringay, older than he, stupid and uncultivated, but beautiful, is snatched from his boyish arms by the ruthless diplomacy of the Major. In his later, worldlywise days Pen learns to be grateful to the Major for this rescue. His second amatory episode is briefer, but not less stormy. Pen's weakness for the porter's pretty daughter, Fanny Bolton, he recognizes himself as 105

dangerous, and he fights against it with a prudence unknown to his earlier boy-self. After an illness brought on by the emotional conflict, he learns also to be glad that he h a d not m a r r i e d Fanny. Thackeray was obviously preoccupied at this period with the problem of u n e q u a l marriages. T h e M a j o r naturally deploys the usual worldly arguments against marriages with h u m b l e r mates, and this is a field in which his indubitable knowledge of average, all-too-human psychology makes his arguments h a r d to refute. H e has, surprisingly enough, certain support f r o m Warrington, who usually abhorred the M a j o r ' s view of life, but whose own l i f e h a d been ruined by a marriage with a coarse, uncultivated woman, with w h o m he soon discovered he could find no happiness. " B e w a r e how you m a r r y out of your degree", this otherwise uncompromising democrat warns Pen. Thackeray himself faces here, with an air of melancholy resignation, the i m p l a c a b l e facts of h u m a n nature, and seems to share the view of a J a n e Austen that a m a r r i a g e between people of very u n e q u a l education and breeding cannot b e successful, unless there are some really unusual qualities on both sides that permit the h o p e of overcoming the difficulties such a situation involves. B u t neither the Fotheringay nor Fanny B o l t o n h a d the resources of intellect or character that would have permitted especially optimistic hopes in this regard, nor did the young m a n himself, with all his susceptibility, give evidence of a capacity for a love so enduring that it could have outlived the difficulties inherent in such a match. B u t if T h a c k e r a y does apparently resign himself to the idea that the glow of youthful love must be tempered by such prudent considerations, h e does it with less serenity than J a n e Austen, and in his final comment on the subject the question of whether the sacrifice of a part of the soul which such a transaction involves is fully compensated for by the moderate, reasonable happiness brought by prudence is left open. What respectable person in the world will not say that [Pen] was right to avoid a marriage with an ill-educated person of low degree, whose relations a gentleman could not well acknowledge, and whose manners would not become her new station? •— and what philosopher would not tell him that the best thing to do with these little passions if they spring up, is to get rid of them, and let them pass over and cure them: that no man dies about a woman or vice versa: and that one or the other having found the impossibility of gratifying his or her desire in the particular instance, must make the best of matters, forget each other, look out elsewhere, and choose again? And yet, perhaps, there may be something said on the other side. Perhaps Bows was right in admiring that passion of Pen's, blind and unreasoning as it was, that made him ready to stake his all for his love; perhaps, if self-sacrifice is a laudable virtue, mere worldly self-sacrifice is not very much to be praised; — in fine, let this be a reserved point to be settled by the individual moralist who chooses to debate it. ( I l l , Ch. 7, p. 88 f.)

In this problem, as in the character problems, Thackeray is in Pendennis taking a less uncompromising attitude than in the Book of Snobs and his other earlier writings. B u t here too it would b e false to look on 106

him as really recanting. If he admits, f o r instance, that it was probably f o r the best, in the long run, that Pen should not have married the Fotheringay o r Fanny Bolton, he makes it equally clear that a loveless marriage with B l a n c h e Amory, merely for the sake of her fortune, would have been just as g r e a t a mistake. On this point Warrington's attitude may safely be assumed to represent Thackeray's own, and Warrington, who was forced b y his own experiences to become an ally of the M a j o r in his opposition to a mésalliance for the young Prince of F a i r o a k s , was his unbending o p p o n e n t in the project of a m a r r i a g e based exclusively on considerations of interest.

The Newcom.es

(1855).

I n The Newcomes there are a number of themes and figures that are closely parallel to many of those in Vanity Fair and Pendennis. A r t h u r Pendennis's worldly temptations have their counterparts in those assailing the heroine of this story, E t h e l Newcome. Ethel's character, too, is in many respects similar to Pen's. She is not a snob by temperament. As a young girl she bitterly resents the sneering way in which her brother B a r n e s s p e a k s of Colonel Newcome and his son Clive, and takes their part when they scandalize her family by publicly visiting a distant and very humbly situated relative of the Newcome family (I, pp. 167, 170). B u t like Pendennis she is attracted by the glitter of worldly life and is tempted to sacrifice her real inclinations in order to m a k e a brilliant marriage. Her engagement to the empty-headed L o r d Farintosh is frankly a matter of ambition. One might say that she becomes a snob, temporarily at least, through her instincts of coquetry. B e a u t i f u l and much courted, she is intoxicated for a time by the sense of power her beauty gives her, and as a coquette she is spurred on to prove that she can capture, the prizes that are most desired by her rivals, which means the richest and socially best situated young men of the season. S h e permits herself no illusions, however, and inwardly rebels against the mercenary bargains that constitute marriages in society, at the very time when, through vanity, love of luxury, and the desire for power, she is herself preparing to sell herself (I, p. 371). L i k e Pendennis she is saved by chance circumstances at the last moment f r o m having to fulfil the worldly bargain, and has the good luck to find in Clive Newcome, as Pendennis in L a u r a , a f a i t h f u l affection that is willing to forgive the temporary infidelity brought by ambition. T h e rôle of the M a j o r in Pen's l i f e is played for Ethel by the domineering old L a d y Kew, her aunt. L a d y Kew's character is, however, closer to L o r d Steyne's, whose relative she is, than to the Major's. I n spite of her determination to marry her niece brilliantly, she is less of a snob than the M a j o r and m o r e the embodiment of pure worldliness. T h e keynote of her character is her " u n b e n d i n g will to d o m i n e e r " (II, p. 92). She is m o r e intelligent than the Major, and never, even in her final defeat, 107

appears in the undignified situations in which the Major's snobbish weaknesses sometimes placed him. Thackeray's crusade against snobbish marriages is reinforced here, as in Vanity Fair, by a warning example of the unhappiness they bring. Barnes Newcome's marriage to Lady Clara Pulleyn is a mercenary bargain arranged against Lady Clara's real inclinations, and ends in misery and disgrace. It is utilized by Thackeray as the occasion for one of his sermons against worldly marriages (II, Ch. 20, pp. 238/9). The subject of shabby gentility also makes its appearance again and in terms very similar to those of its previous occurrences (I, Ch. 9, p. 103). Thackeray has, however, become still more indulgent towards this variety of snobbery, and draws Miss Honeyman and her little genteel foibles with humour and tendernesss. Among the newer types in the story there is also one whose slight tinges of snobbery are treated with amused indulgence. Colonel Newcome, the gentleman sans peur

et sans reproche,

has, with all his k i n d n e s s a n d

goodness, a few old-fashioned prejudices about questions of rank. He disapproves of Fielding as a writer, for instance, because of his portrayal of low life. " A book ( J o s e p h Andrews), sir, that tells the story of a parcel of servants, of a pack of footmen and ladies' maids fuddling in ale-houses! Do you suppose I want to know what my kitmutgars and cansomahs 8 0 are doing? I am a6 little proud as any man in the world: but there must be distinction, s i r ; and as it is my lot . . . to be a gentleman, I won't sit in the kitchen and boose in the servants' hall." (I, Ch. 4, p. 46.)

Similarly, he can never be brought to feel at ease about his son's friendship with Ridley, the gifted young painter whose father was a footman. These feelings are probably accounted for by the Colonel's long sojourn in India, where, as a result of the prevalence of native servants, the cleft between master and domestic is deepened by the difference in race. In addition, his military experience has given him the soldier's feeling for the respect due to a superior officer, which he then carries over into social life. This well-bred respect for social superiors has, however, no influence on his personal independence. His behaviour to the young Lord Kew was "ceremonious but not in the least servile". He "saluted the other's superior rank, not his person, as he turned the guard out for a general officer" (I, p. 213). Another new type is represented by Mrs. Hobson Newcome, the intellectual matron in whom baffled social ambition seeks compensation through "lion-hunting". Her character is a study in one kind of antisnobbery. There are people on whom rank and worldly goods make such an impression, that they naturally fall down on their knees and worship the owners; there are others to whom the sight of prosperity is offensive; and who never see Dives' chariot 80

108

Indian servants.

but to growl and hoot at it. Mrs. Newcome, as far as my humble experience would lead me to suppose, is not only envious, but proud of her envy. She mistakes it for honesty and public spirit. S h e will not bow down to kiss the hand of a haughty aristocracy. She is a merchant's wife and an attorney's daughter. There is no pride about her. Her brother-in-law, poor dear Brian, . . . was welcome, after banking-hours, to forsake his own friends for his wife's fine relations, and to dangle after lords and ladies in May Fair. She had no such absurd vanity — not she. She imparted these opinions pretty liberally to all her acquaintances in almost all her conversations. (I, Ch. 5, p. 51.) There are reminiscences in this passage of the remarks quoted above from the Shabby Genteel Story, as well as of the character of Mr. Brough and of Mr. Osborne. Mrs. N e w c o m e is another representative of the City aristocracy secretly pining for admittance into the circle just above it, but with the variation that instead of defiantly harping on her wealth, as the others do, she puts her pride in surrounding herself with all varieties of scientific and literary celebrities, and, making a virtue out of necessity, assumes airs of intolerable self-righteousness over this renunciation of worldly triumphs — "Consummate Virtue" is Thackeray's nickname for her. "Fashion I do not worship" (she says to a guest at one of her painfully intellectual soirées). "You may meet that amongst other branches of our family; but genius and talent I do reverence. And if I can be the means — the h u m b l e means — to bring men of genius together — mind to associate with mind —- men of all nations to mingle in f r i e n d l y u n i s o n — I shall not have lived a l t o g e t h e r in vain. They call us women of the world f r i v o l o u s . So some may be; I do not say there are not in our own family persons who worship mere wordly rank, and think but of fashion and gaiety; but such, I trust, will never be the objects in life of me and my children. We are but merchants; we seek to be n o m o r e . . . If I can gather together travellers, poets, and painters, princes and distinguished soldiers from the East, and clergymen remarkable for their eloquence, m y humble aim is attained, and Maria Newcome is not altogether useless in her generation51." (I, Ch. 8, p. 95.) A touch of antisnobbery of another and more amiable variety is to be found in the hero, Clive Newcome. There is an anticipation of certain traits of Meredith's Evan Harrington in Clive's little scene about the tarts. Irritated partly by jealousy at his cousin Ethel's attentions to the rich young Lord Farintosh, and partly by the uneasy feeling that the young bucks present were laughing at h i m for being nothing but a struggling art student, h e rather unmotivatedly and ostentatiously proffers the information that the tarts they are eating and praising had been made by his aunt, Miss Honey man, the lodging-house keeper. T h e discomfort of his relatives, w h o had not thought it necessary to talk much about their connection with the good Miss Honeyman, and the bewilderment of their guests, who are surprised at Clive's vehemence, cast something of a damper on the party. Thackeray's comments on this episode are very similar to 81

For a figure very similar to Mrs. Newcome see Thackeray's Lion-Huntress of Belgravia (1850). 109

those m a d e by Meredith about the young Harrington in similar circumstances (see below, p. 139). Clive tried to think he had asserted his independence by showing that he was not ashamed of his old aunt; but the doubt may be whether there was any necessity for presenting her in this company, and whether Mr. Clive had not much better have left the tart question alone. — . . . A young man of spirit not unfrequently mistakes his vanity for independence. % (II, Ch. 4, pp. 49, 50.)

Of interest as a sidelight on cultural history are Thackeray's observations on the low social standing given in his day to painting as a profession. T h e m a n of letters was beginning to be looked on as almost a gentleman, but the painter was still something of an outcast. T h e Muse of Painting is a lady whose social station is not altogether recognised with us as yet. The polite world permits a gentleman to amuse himself with her, but to take her for better or for worse! forsake all other chances and cleave unto her! to assume her name! Many a respectable person would be as much shocked at the notion as if his son had married an opera-dancer. (I, Ch. 27, p. 298.)

A theme which is not new in Thackeray, but which is given special e m p h a s i s in this book, is the contrast between F r a n c e and E n g l a n d in their attitude towards rank. Thackeray abhors the French m a r r i a g e system, with its subordination of sentiment to the question of the dowry (cf. I, p. 354), but in the question of snobbery properly speaking he finds the French less infected than the English. H e paints the astonishment caused in E n g l i s h circles by the f a c t that de F l o r a e and his father do not trouble to assume the new titles coming to them by the death of a relative. It is wonderful for us who inhabit a country where rank is worshipped with so admirable a reverence, to think that there are many gentlemen in France who actually have authentic titles and do not choose to bear them. (I, Ch. 36, p. 419.)

H e also contrasts favourably the French respect for artists with the English attitude towards them. Ethel's aristocratic relatives are bewildered at being congratulated by the great ladies in Paris upon their relationship to Clive Newcome because of his painting. " M o n s i e u r Newcome is an a r t i s t ! " the French ladies exclaim to the Countess of Kew, " W h a t a noble career! . . . Y o u must be p r o u d to possess such a nephew, M a d a m e " (II, p. 85). T o be agreeable to the old Countess they invite Clive to the receptions at which she is to b e present, just at the time when the old lady is fighting with every atom of her strength to prevent a match between Ethel and him. I n the novel there is much less chance of doubt than in Pendennis as to Thackeray's condemnation of snobbery. H e draws a devastating picture of the servile adulation with which the insignificant aristocrat, L o r d Farintosh, is surrounded and of the pernicious effect it has on his character (II, p. 172), and he shows the bewilderment of de F l o r a e at the attentions p a i d to h i m by his country neighbours when he assumes his 110

title of prince. " W h a t men are you E n g l i s h ! " F l o r a e exclaims, " M y word of honour, there are some of them here — if I were to say to them wax my boots, they would take them and wax t h e m ! " (II, p. 216). It is also significant that the two most disagreeable characters in the book, B a r n e s Newcome and the " C a m p a i g n e r " , Rosey Mackenzie's d r e a d f u l mother, are most conspicuous snobs (see especially I, p. 167 and II, p. 416).

The Adventures of Philip (1860) and snobbery in Thackeray's other works. T h e three novels treated in the foregoing comprise the most important part of Thackeray's presentation of snobbery in fiction. His other novels, as well as the various briefer writings of his maturity, also include many figures and passages that testify to his continued interest in the subject as a p r o b l e m of h u m a n character, but bring comparatively little that is new. Thackeray's last complete novel, The Adventures of Philip, offers, in quantity, almost as much on snobbery as the Newcomes, but most of the snob figures in it have f a m i l i a r faces. T h e nearest to a new type is given in the hero himself. T h e stormy, warm-hearted P h i l i p is in most essentials conspicuously not snobbish. Thackeray paints h i m as that rara avis, a m a n who is wholly undisturbed in the presence of his social superiors, however lofty their rank m a y b e ; Pendennis, the narrator, reports of him that " h e was one of the half-dozen men I have seen in my life u p o n whom rank m a d e no impression" (I, p. 344). On the other hand, he h a d considerable pride in his pedigree, and at a certain stage of conviviality, after he h a d h a d a bottle of wine, was wont to refer to the glories of his ancestry in the most dramatic terms (I, p. 184 etc.). P h i l i p is the exact opposite of Sir J o h n Ringwood, his distant relative, who, like a n u m b e r of figures in Thackeray's other books, flaunted the most democratic principles while mistreating his inferiors and cringing before his superiors. Philip, in spite of his occasional boasting, treated the great p e o p l e who might have been of use to him, but whom he did not like personally, with such open disrespect that he rapidly m a d e enemies of them. A n d when, after his days of prosperity, it was his turn to be poor and excluded f r o m fashionable society, he bore his lot with great philosophy, disliking the inconveniences of poverty but not in the least conscious of any loss of dignity. " T o this day, if necessity called, P h i l i p would turn a m a n g l e with perfect gravity", Pendennis says of him (II, p. 316). In the Twysden f a m i l y Thackeray draws an extremely disagreeable kind of snobbery of the type first presented in his R e s p e c t a b l e S n o b s in the Book of Snobs. With reference to this family L a u r a Pendennis m a k e s some remarks repeating Thackeray's pet theme of the vulgarity of most conventional "gentility". " I can't help it sometimes", cries Laura in a transport. " I try and do my best not to speak ill of my neighbours; but the worldliness of those people shocks 111

me so that I can't bear to be near them. They are so utterly tied and bound by ' conventionalities, so perfectly convinced of their own excessive high-breeding, that they seem to me more odious and more vulgar than quite low people." (I, Ch. 14, p. 279.)

In Dr. Firmin (Brandon of the Shabby Genteel Story) we have a portrait of a fashionable physician whose character is dominated by a peculiarly virulent kind of half-servile snobbery. Other figures who remind us of snobs in Thackeray's previous studies are Mrs. Baynes, who as the heroine's mother plays a similar role to that of the "Campaigner" in the Newcomes, Bickerton, the parvenu with the naive presumption and condescension (II, p. 162), and Jarman and Trail, the enviers, who speak evil of any man who has more fashionable friends than they have (I, p. 171; II, p. 224). There is likewise the inevitable case of a snobbish marriage that turns out badly. One of the Twysden daughters marries the rich, stupid, and half-mulatto Woolcomb, a masculine and less amiable counterpart of the Miss Swartz of Vanity Fair, is mistreated by him and, after divorcing him, sinks to a kind of life that Thackeray refrains from describing. As a contrast to this worldly marriage there is the imprudent but happy marriage of the penniless hero with the penniless Charlotte Baynes. In Thackeray's two eighteenth-century novels, Henry Esmond (1852) and The Virginians (1859), there are also a few snob types, but few of any special interest. Thackeray is naturally somewhat more lenient in his judgment of the prejudices of rank in the olden days, but his eighteenthcentury snobbish figures are essentially the same types he shows in his novels of his own times. The most striking snob among them is Mrs. Rachel Warrington ("Madam Esmond"), the colonial would-be grande dame of the Virginians. Beatrix Esmond is an earlier and more brilliant Ethel Newcome, a coquette eager for worldly triumphs, but hardly a snob in the full sense of the word. In Thackeray's minor writings subsequent to the Book of Snobs he frequently touches on the subject of snobbery and a few figures deserve mention.

Lady

Of the C h r i s t m a s B o o k s ,

Perkins

Ball

and

Our

Street

naturally bring a number of snob figures among their half-burlesque character sketches. But the most original snobs are to be found in Rebecca and Rowena, the parody sequel to Ivanhoe. We see Rowena, the fair and insipid, grown into a highly conventional matron with a great concern for her social position, and best of all, the great Robin Hood, settled down as a country squire, profoundly convinced, like Jeames, of the "duties as well as privileges" given by property. In the long short-story, Lovel the Widower (1860), there are also some amusing snob portraits, chief among them being Lady Baker, an arrogant parvenu, and Sargent, a university snob. *

Glancing at Thackeray's work as a whole, we see him progressing from the harshness of his early portraits of snobs, and the heated indig112

nation of the Book of Snobs, to an attitude of more philosophical tolerance of the milder varieties of snobbery, and to a somewhat greater sympathy with worldliness, if worn with grace. This fact, coupled with a remark Thackeray is said to have made to Motley to the effect that "the Snob P a p e r s were those of his writings he liked l e a s t 8 2 " , has sometimes led to the belief that Thackeray in his later days condoned snobbery and regretted that he had ever entered on the crusade against it. A reading of Philip, his last novel, should be sufficient to dissipate this idea; his unsparing portraits of the Twysdens and of Dr. Firmin show that his dislike of snobbery h a d remained essentially the same. T h e remark he made about the Book of Snobs probably represented the riper Thackeray's recognition that in his youthful severity he had exaggerated the universality of snobbery and had over-simplified rather complex problems. Probably when he read his early indignant denunciations of the vanities he h a d at that time observed in the people he saw about him, and compared them with the harsh judgments some of his own acquaintances had passed on him, he had at times a feeling of "de me fabula". Chiefly, however, his disapproval of the Snob Papers, so far as it was not just the expression of a fleeting mood, probably referred to the few inferior papers, marked by rather ill-judged personalities (especially in the political papers), which he omitted from the collected edition with the note that he had found them "so stupid, so personal, so snobbish in a w o r d 8 3 " . Thackeray's later work at its best shows him trying to see life as a whole, in all its contradictions and relativity, and as a result his later judgments of society are more modest, less absolute than his earlier ones. He becomes more realistic, less doctrinaire. H e retains his dislike of toadying and pretence, but when he thinks that he sees them he continually stops to consider whether he is not himself being unconsciously influenced by a tinge of envy or ill-will (see especially Roundabout H e begins to see that in some of the traditions he had sweepPapers). ingly condemned as prejudices there might be some grains of truth, as when he remarks that after all "it takes three generations to make a gentleman" (Melville), in contrast to his earlier purely ethical conception of the gentleman. This apparent increase in conservatism, which we see best in his Roundabout Papers (1860), is merely a sign of his honesty and of his increased experience, which make him see the other side. He still dislikes snobbery, but he no longer sees it as overshadowing all the other sins of society. If he had written the Book of Snobs in his old age it is probable he would have been more careful to separate pure snobbery from the other human urges he had originally confused with it, and that he would have opened himself to less criticism by his exaggerations, but it may be questioned whether the work would have had the effectiveness as vigorous satire that it gained precisely from its inspired one-sidedness. 82 83

Preface to Biographical Edition, 1911, Smith Elder, p. XV. ibid. p. XV.

113

Chapter GEORGE

II.

MEREDITH.

Biographical

Notes84.

His father a tailor and the son of a tailor, his mother the daughter of an inn-keeper, his step-mother a former domestic servant — such were the genealogical recommendations to society offered by George Meredith upon his entry into it. And this at a time when the name of "tradesman" aroused a shudder in all well-thinking ladies and gentlemen such as has probably not been equalled before or since. Meredith says of one of his characters " h e sprang (behind a curtain of horror) from tradesmen" (Diana, p. 127). Now Meredith himself was not only a son of the shop, but of a peculiarly ignominious kind of shop. Among the unhappy race of tradesmen the tailors have always been subject to more than the ordinary quantity of disdain. Ungrateful England, who owes so much of her reputation abroad to the excellence of her tailors, has, instead of making them heroes, loaded them with all her contempt and, what is still harder to shake off, all her ridicule. T h e saying that "it takes nine tailors to make a m a n " is very old, and if Carlyle is to be believed, Queen Elizabeth once greeted a delegation of eighteen tailors with "Good morning, gentlemen b o t h 8 5 ! " In striking contrast to his origins were Meredith's physical and mental characteristics and his early training. "Aristocrate, Meredith l'était par toutes les fibres nerveuses de son être", says his biographer René Galland (p. 191). And in his appearance, in the fineness of his features, the dignity and grace of his head, there were united all the elements that give the impression of the aristocratic gentleman to the popular imagination. Holman Hunt said of him that he was a "perfect example of the well-bred Englishman". In addition, to this native refinement, that was bound to make him dissatisfied in the atmosphere of small-town trade into which he was born, his early education was of a sort to give him tastes and pre8 4 It is necessary to give somewhat more consideration to Meredith's personal history than to that of the other writers dealt with in this study for the reason that he was more handicapped than they in achieving an objective attitude towards the social order of his time, and thereby towards snobbery, by the circumstances of his birth and position in society. In the following sketch of his life only those sides of his experience that are of relevance, direct or indirect, to our subject will be considered. 88

114

Sartor

Resartus,

Chap. 11.

tensions that were in striking disharmony with the actual social position of his f a m i l y . Meredith's tailor grandfather, Melchisedec Meredith, whose portrait we have in the figure of "the great M e l " in Evan Harrington, h a d been, in the circles where he was known, the prodigy of his generation. " T h i s h a d been a grand man, despite his calling, and in the teeth of opprobrious epithets against his craft . . . Mr. Melchisedec, whom people in private called the great Mel, had been at once the sad dog of L y m p o r t (Portsm o u t h ) , and the pride of the town. H e was a tailor, and he kept horses; he was a tailor, and he had gallant adventures; he was a tailor, and he shook h a n d s with his customers. Finally, he was a tradesman, and he never was known to have sent in a b i l l " ( E . H., p. 1). What we know of Melchisedec Meredith's actual history bears out this description given in Evan Harrington. He seems not only to have been accepted on an equal footing in the homes of many members of the local country nobility, but to have enjoyed triumphs in London circles of quite dizzying height. George Meredith never knew this phenomenal grandfather, but the f a m i l y tradition was naturally full of tales about him. Meredith paints h i m as a man of rare distinction in a p p e a r a n c e and manner — a miniature of him that has been preserved confirms this report of his a p p e a r a n c e — and with a capacity for brilliant conversation and a genuine flair for aristocratic manners and occupations that explain his social success. In financial matters his disdain for bourgeois economy and his incapacity to descend to such low matters as the collection of his bills caused him to be less successful, in spite of the solid good sense of his wife, the daughter of a local lawyer, and herself a woman of distinction in a p p e a r a n c e and manners. His five daughters, who inherited their parents' good looks and something of their father's charm, all m a r r i e d well and escaped f r o m the atmosphere of the shop, b u t his son, Meredith's father, was prevented by his father's improvidence f r o m leading the l i f e of a gentleman that his fathers' ideas of grandeur h a d undoubtedly led h i m to expect as his due, and was forced to carry on the tailoring business. Of Meredith's father we know rather little. Meredith once speaks of him as " a m u d d l e r and a f o o l 8 6 " , and we know that he was dissatisfied if not embittered at the fate that h a d m a d e him a tailor. With m a n y of the tastes of the great Mel, to which he added an interest in literature, he lacked the magnetism and vitality that would h a v e permitted h i m to imitate his father's triumphant career. In 1824 he m a r r i e d J a n e Macnamara, the daughter of a Portsmouth inn-keeper, and a certain t i m e after her death in 1833 married his cook, sold his business and went to live in Cape Town, S o u t h Africa, when his son George was twenty-one years old. In the accounts of Meredith's childhood given us by his biographers it is h a r d to separate what is definitely historical and what is deduction from those of his novels that a p p e a r to give autobiographical hints. »» Ed. Clodd, Fortnightly Review, July 1909 (Galland).

115

G a l l a n d accepts the early parts of Harry Richmond as giving a description of Meredith's relationship to his father but appears to overlook the extreme difference in temperament there is between Richmond Roy of the novel and Meredith's father as history presents him. We do not know, therefore, whether George's father, like Harry's, taught him at a precocious age to recite long passages f r o m the Peerage, or f e d h i m on an intoxicating diet of imaginative f a b l i n g impregnated with the spirit of heroic adventure and fantastic snobbery. Neither do we know whether the infantile George c a m e to inform his family that he was the " t h o n of a t h n i p " (son of a snip, i. e. tailor), nor whether at school he told his comrades that he was the son of a cavalry officer, as E v a n Harrington did. We do know, however, that the child was brought u p in a manner hardly conducive to a sense of realism as to his actual social position. Reminiscences of some of his Portsmouth playmates show him unconsciously taking on an air of being different f r o m and superior to the neighbours' children. His toys were luxurious, and we hear of a birthday party given for him when he was five which apparently took on the proportions of a grand reception, with fifty guests and lavish refreshments. Instead of being sent to the Portsmouth school to which all the neighbours' children went, he was sent to St. Paul's in Southsea, where the pupils h a d a great scorn for the Portsmouth boys. J . Price r e p o r t s 8 7 that Meredith was given the nickname of " G e n t l e m a n G e o r g y " and that at the age of about eleven h e talked to his elders about horses and races with all the nonchalance of a L o n d o n dandy. His air towards his Portsmouth comrades was one of naively condescending affability. H e was probably only saved f r o m becoming quite insufferable by the fact that when he was fourteen he was sent to Neuwied, Germany, to the school of the Moravian Brothers, where the reigning atmosphere was one of simple and unaffected piety. Even here, however, his self-consciousness about social distinctions was not likely to be wholly obliterated, if we m a y follow the account given by another pupil, Henry M o r l e y 8 8 , who describes how the English boys at the school entertained each other with pretentious and highly imaginative accounts of the splendour of their families and homes. It would h a v e been easy for the young Meredith, so f a r f r o m h o m e and old acquaintances, to represent himself as the son of a cavalry officer, like his hero Harry Richmond. Of this we know nothing, however; in general the influence of Neuwied seems to have given him an antidote to the worldliness with which his ill-judged earlier education h a d impregnated him. A letter to one of his young friends shows h i m going through a period of religious awakening, which was not to b e of very long duration, it is true, but which appears to have been sincere, and m a n y traces of German influence in his later work indicate that his contact with Germany philosophy and literature was not u n f r u i t f u l . 87 88

116

Ellis, pp. 44 f. Quoted by Galland, p. 25.

After this decidedly unusual childhood, with its conflicting influences, Meredith was faced by the difficult problem of the choice of a career. The small fortune he had inherited from his mother had been much decreased by the ill-judged investments of his guardian, so that he was forced to resign all thoughts of going to a university. We do not know whether he was ever faced with the danger of having to enter the detested shop. For a year and a half after his leaving Neuwied we know nothing of his occupations. In 1846, at the age of eighteen, he became an articled clerk with a London solicitor, Richard Charnock, but seems to have read less for the law than in English and classical literature. Mr. Charnock was a man to sympathize with Meredith's awakening literary ambitions and it was in collaboration with him that Meredith began his literary career by the founding of "The Monthly Observer", a literary magazine in manuscript, in which his first writings appear. Meredith's marriage in 1849 to Mary Nicolls, the daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, was, as is well known, not a happy one. Even in the first comparatively satisfactory years the young couple were called on to suffer periods of extreme poverty, a hard test for people of such impatient tempers, and one that was not sweetened by any of the rewards of fame: Meredith's first poems were not received well by the critics and his attempts at journalism were hard to market. The growing tension between them had its source in the incompatibility of their temperaments, but might have been mitigated if their material circumstances had been more favourable. One of the issues between them that seems to have had its share in leading to the final break was the question of Meredith's accepting some kind of work to supply them with a regular income. Mary could not see why Meredith should not take a position such as her father had at the India Hause; imitating Peacock he could have written his novels or poems in his hours of leisure. One day, when she thought she had found the right place for him, she made him promise to present himself in London at a certain address. George promised, and set out dutifully for the station, but came home in the evening, after a day of wandering in the fields, innocently professing to have forgotten the whole matter. In Meredith's determination to live only on the proceeds of his art the dominant motive was probably the artist's healthy instinct to protect himself against anything that might draw him from his real vocation. It is just possible, however, that this reason was complicated by something of the almost morbid dislike for anything connected with business and commerce that Meredith had inherited from two generations of dissatisfied tradesmen. If Mary sensed or suspected this less avowable motive we may be sure that she did not let the opportunity slip of taunting him on it and that Meredith writhed at this touch on his raw point. The great difficulty in their married life was that neither of them knew when to suppress a sarcasm. "They sharpened their wits on each other1', one of their friends said. 117

Meredith's nervous irritability, shown in his married l i f e and in his excessive sensitivity to the adverse criticism his books often underwent, was p e r h a p s the f o r m of vengeance taken by the abnormal method of his upbringing. Although it did not succeed in making him a snob, a fate f r o m which he was saved by the true pride that was dominant in h i m , the crass inconsistency between his childish illusions about has place in the world and the reality was bound to leave a trace on such a sensitive spirit. In his weaker moments, when his consciousness of belonging to an intellectual élite was not sufficient to m a k e him indifferent to worldly recognition, or when some slight h a d given his amour-propre a twinge, he probably unconsciously clung to the thought that literary f a m e would b e a compensation for the ignominy of his origins. In these moments he magnified every breath of adverse criticism. Sencourt writes, " T o Meredith, the greeting of contempt, which met h i m too often, worked like agony. . . . T h e r e were times when in his paroxysms of desperation he would run round the park till he d r o p p e d " (p. 43). T h e slights were probably not lacking, although Meredith's reticence permits us only occasional glimpses of them. One of his letters to Mrs. J a n e t Ross ( J a n e t Gordon) gives an ironic account of the clumsy condescension of one of their acquaintances: H— is a good old boy. He has a pleasant way of being inquisitive and has already informed me that I am a gentleman, though I may not have been born one. Some men are always shooting about you like May flies in little quick darts, to see how near you they may come. The best thing is to smile and enjoy the fun of it. I confess a private preference for friends who are not thus afflicted and get the secret by instinct. As my Janet, for instance. — (Letters, vol. I. p. 47.)

T h e grateful appreciation expressed in the last line of t h e above letter is Meredith's acknowledgment of the beneficent influence the DuffGordon family h a d exercised on him. H e met them through Peacock, and at their house b e c a m e acquainted with a circle of people who h a d both f r o m a worldly and an intellectual point of view a great deal to offer to a young writer. A n d in L a d y Duff-Gordon herself, whose portrait we have and in L a d y Dunstane of Diana of in L a d y Jocelyn of Evan Harrington the Crossways, Meredith f o u n d a friend who could give him precisely the kind of encouragement and advice his sensitivity needed. K e e n l y intelligent, f r a n k , kindly, she was free of all the superstitious sides of class prejudice, and yet h a d a realistic appreciation for the practical advantages of social position t h a t was calculated to save him f r o m letting his first social success lead h i m into new illusions about the actual state of m i n d of the English world of his time. Her fine balance of worldly wisd o m and utter independence of views was undoubtedly a very h e a l t h f u l influence for Meredith, and p r o b a b l y h e l p e d him in coming so early to an attitude of superior and rather ironic objectivity towards social questions, without passing through the stages of defiance or over-protestation that his position would have m a d e only too natural. 118

Meredith was destined to make many friends who, in addition to the qualities of character and mind that attracted him, had a social position much above his own. T h e son of the Portsmouth tailor numbered among his true friends the son of an admiral, the grandson of an earl, kinsmen of Napoleon and many other members of the best society of the time. But never, in all the reports of his friends and acquaintances, do we find the hint of anything but perfect naturalness, frank, give-and-take friendliness in all these friendships. Never did Meredith show a tinge of over-eagerness, or of defiant stiffness in his social relationships. In his own life he thus seemed to have overcome, by the strength of his intelligence, his self-criticism, and his keen sense of what is dignified and graceful in human conduct, everything that, from his bad start in life, would have seemed to lead inevitably to either snobbery or misanthropy 8 9 . T o his friends and contemporaries, then, Meredith could appear to be wholly free f r o m any awkward self-consciousness about his social position. W e who read his biography, however, are in a position to discover the one weak point in his tranquillity, the point that shows that in spite of all his philosophy he was human enough not always to live up to it. T o n o - o n e , a p p a r e n t l y n o t e v e n to his b e s t f r i e n d s , d i d M e r e d i t h t e l l t h e f u l l s t o r y o f h i s o r i g i n s . He even, near the close of his life, filled out a census form inaccurately, giving his place of birth as "near Peterfield" instead of Portsmouth, apparently to avoid possible inquiries among his fellow townsmen. When, some time after his death, Mr. S. M. Ellis, who was related to Meredith's family by marriage, published an article describing Meredith as the son of a Portsmouth tailor and showing that he had described his own family in Evan Harrington, there was a considerable flurry of amazement and incredulity. Apparently no-one had ever seen through the transparent autobiographical references in Evan Harrington. It is of course not surprising that Meredith did not care to have the general public know that he was the son of a tailor. Literary criticism in his day was still likely to take to indelicate personalities when a writer did not meet with a critic's favour, and quite aside from the discomfort he would personally suffer in seeing his origins made a subject of ridicule, he might well feel that the reception of his works would be unfavourably influenced by such a revelation. One can imagine the quiet sneers about "high l i f e as pictured by a tailor's son" that would greet the pictures of upper society for which his talent especially suited him. He probably was conscious of the fact that a writer who wishes to exercise social criticism ought to have as neutral a position in the social scale as possible. If 8 9 It will be remembered that Meredith was offered a baronetcy near the end of his life, but refused it as "unsuitable", as he put it to a friend. It is possible that he was thinking of his obscure birth, but the more likely explanation is that he considered such a title "unsuitable" f o r a man who had so severely criticized the institution of hereditary titles.

119

Meredith's silence towards strangers, then, is quite comprehensible on grounds of practical expediency, still the fact that his closest friends were kept in ignorance of his origins, even at a time when his undoubted f a m e h a d put h i m in a position to be beyond all danger of a p p e a r i n g in the least ridiculous, seems to indicate that he could not quite conquer an involuntary distaste f o r bringing u p the subject. T h i s attitude would not cause much surprise in another man, but in Meredith, who h a d so keen an eye for the last secret refuges of vanity in other people and in himself, it is definitely significant of how deep his sensitiveness on the subject went. On the other h a n d , it is probable, as Mr. Priestley r e m a r k s 9 0 , that in the later years it was no longer shame of his origins but merely shame at having once been ashamed of them that kept Meredith silent. Nevertheless one m a y b e sure that the " C o m i c S p i r i t " he d i d allegiance to d i d not s p a r e him some sharp pricks at the thought that he, who in his books was so merciless in searching out the little weaknesses and pretensions of h u m a n k i n d , and who steadily preached the " f a c i n g of f a c t s " and glorified m o r a l courage above all other virtues, h a d not himself h a d the courage to confess to being the son of a tailor. It is even likely that Meredith's strict standards for himself caused him to exaggerate the seriousness of this weakness and to suffer under a sense of travelling under false pretences. It would seem that this feeling h a d f o u n d expression in the frequent occurrence in Meredith's novels of a person who, through his own f a u l t or t h a t of others, feels himself in the position of an impostor, as f o r e x a m p l e in Evan Harrington, Harry Richmond, and One of our Conquerors. It seems to be quite certain, however, that Meredith did not h a v e to reproach himself with having posed as a m a n of any special distinction of birth. T h i s follows clearly from the letter to Mrs. Ross quoted above and likewise f r o m a letter he wrote to an American who h a d admired his work in 1886: "As for me, I am, I trust, to the full as modest a person as I am bound to be. In origin I am what is called here a nobody, and my pretensions to that rank have always received due encouragement, by which, added to a turn of my mind, I am inclined to Democracy, even in Letters, and tend to think of the claims of others when I find myself exalted." (Letters, p. 387.)

It seems almost incredible that Meredith could h a v e kept his secret so successfully throughout his long life. Especially r e m a r k a b l e is the fact that no-one discovered the transparent references to his own f a m i l y in Evan Harrington. H e r e Meredith gives the portraits of his g r a n d f a t h e r and of three of his aunts, giving, in all but one case, the actual Christian names of the p e o p l e involved, and describing the Portsmouth shop (Portsm o u t h being disguised as "Lymport-on-the-Sea"). F r o m his own f a m i l y Meredith could expect silence, if his description of their snobbery is accurate, but h e must h a v e reckoned with the possibility of some P o r t s m o u t h neighbour's writing to some magazine about the originals of the portraits. 90

120

J . B. Priestley, George Meredith, p. 3.

May he not even have counted on it as a certainty and have thus taken this indirect way of m a k i n g a revelation t h a t he f o u n d it distasteful to m a k e personally? T h e r e seems to be no other explanation of the quite unnecessary use of the actual first names of his g r a n d f a t h e r and his aunts. A touch of youthful fatalism may have caused h i m to say to himself that, if by some chance the facts did not come out in this way, then he was justified in keeping u p the mystery. His dignity was partially covered by his being able, in the event of a later discovery, to point to his openness in this case. I n Harry Richmond there is a passage of which the autobiographical significance has apparently not been noticed by Meredith's biographers but which may be looked on as his apologia f o r his lack of frankness in this matter. (Harry Richmond, who has been pushed by his father to court a princess, finally faces the fact that his father's pretensions to brilliant ancestry, which he had half shared himself, are based on very flimsy foundations) " I could not deny that I had partly, insensibly clung to the vain glitter of hereditary distinctions, my father's pitfall; taking it for a substantial foothold, when a young man of wit and sensibility and, mark you, true pride, would have made it his first care to trample that under heel. Excellent is pride; but o h ! be sure of its foundations before you go on building monument high. I know nothing to equal the anguish of an examination of the basis of one's pride that discovers it not solidly fixed: an imposing, self-imposing structure piled upon empty cellarage. . . . Whether in the middle of life it is adviseable to descend the pedestal altogether, I dare not say. Few take the precaution to build a flight of steps inside — it is not a labour to be proud o f ; fewer like to let themselves down in the public eye — it amounts to a castigation; you must, I fear, remain up there, and accept your chance in toppling over." (Ch. 33, p. 286.)

Since the reference to the peculiar difficulty in stepping out of a false position i n m i d d l e l i f e is unmotivated in the novel, Harry Richmond being a very young man, there can b e little doubt that Meredith was thinking of his own position. T h e parallel with Harry's situation is m a d e still closer if we suppose, as is not unlikely, that Meredith's grandfather Melchisedec h a d , like his namesake in Evan Harrington, been free with mysterious suggestions of lofty origins and that Meredith in his youth h a d accepted this consoling family tradition as not wholly unworthy of b e l i e f 9 1 . T h e distinguished personal a p p e a r a n c e of the members of the family lent s o m e weight to this idea. T h e y could say, as Melchisedec is quoted as saying, " W e have nature's p r o o f ! " ( E . H., Ch. 14, p. 149). This sketch of Meredith's life, concerned as it is with only one problem in his development, naturally gives a one-sided view. I n all but the earliest period of his l i f e the question of his p l a c e in the social scale probably engaged only fleeting moments of his thought, being buried under the much m o r e important preoccupations attending his intellectual and 9 1 Galland (p. 3) points out that the Welsh name Meredith permitted a flattering belief in descent from Maredudd ab Owain (d. 999), or from Maredudd ap Bleddyn,

prince of Powys (d. 1132).

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spiritual development. His h a p p y second marriage, too, p r o b a b l y did much to give h i m t h e stability and equanimity t h a t h e needed to reach a really serene indifference to such things. On t h e other h a n d , Meredith's fastidiousness in spiritual things, his very contempt f o r t h e triviality of his little secret weakness, would prevent h i m f r o m completely forgetting t h e m a t t e r , as a more "tough-minded" person, to use t h e Jamesian phrase, would have done. A n d t h e best evidence t h a t this personal p r o b l e m was not banished wholly is given in his works, as will be seen in t h e following pages. I t is, f o r example, probably significant t h a t of all Meredith's novels t h e r e are only two (Beauchamp's Career and Diana of the Crossways) in which t h e r e is not the problem of a marriage between social unequals, e i t h e r in t h e case of t h e principal characters or in a side-plot. Meredith

and

Snobbery.

I n t r o d u c t o r y : D o m i n a n t themes in Meredith's work as a whole. M e r e d i t h was a writer who took his mission as a critic of l i f e and society just as seriously as Thackeray. In spite of his early contact w i t h t h e Pre-Raphaelites, t h e r e is little of his work t h a t is d o m i n a t e d by the purely aesthetic motive, by the doctrine of art f o r art's sake. Even in his poetry, ethical, philosophical or satiric themes predominate. T h a t h e is, nevertheless, of another intellectual generation t h a n Thackeray shows itself in t h e terminology of values h e employs: good and b a d present themselves to h i m n o t as r i g h t and wrong but as h e a l t h y and u n h e a l t h y , sound and unsound. "Sane", "natural", "healthy", " h o n e s t " are t h e expressions t h a t embody his highest praise 9 2 , and his sympathies are f o r a " p a g a n virtue" r a t h e r t h a n f o r other-worldliness and asceticism. I n studying Meredith's treatment of snobbery we shall b e seeing chiefly t h e negative side of his writing. Like J a n e Austen, Fielding, Thackeray, Dickens, a n d so many other writers in t h e great English tradition, h e sees one of t h e novelist's chief services in t h e discovery a n d castigation of the faults of h u m a n nature and society. B u t r a t h e r m o r e t h a n these other writers, h e is consciously concerned with t h e f o r m u l a t i o n of the positive ideals to be set u p in opposition to these faults, and it is only by keeping in m i n d this affirmative side of his work t h a t we can u n d e r s t a n d t h e f u l l i m p o r t of his criticism of the life of his time. T h e most i m p o r t a n t ideal guiding Meredith's work is his allegiance to " N a t u r e " . T h e greater p a r t of his poetry is t h e expression of his gospel of E a r t h ; " E a r t h and Man", " E a r t h ' s Secret", "A Reading of E a r t h " : these titles are characteristic. And in his novels, too, t h e great medicine h e offers f o r t h e ills of t h e age is a return to h a r m o n y with Mother E a r t h a n d h e r laws. Meredith's conception of nature is a highly individual one. H i s is not a W o r d s w o r t h i a n mysticism based on t h e beauty of external n a t u r e nor is it a Rousseauian idealization of noble savagery. N a t u r to h i m is t h e 93

122

Similar observations are made by Alberts-Arndt, § 2, and Beach, p. 12.

principle of sanity, of healthfulness, of order, which, he believes, can be read in earth and in our own natures when they are not perverted by a false conception of civilization. Divinity is to be sought here and not outside of nature or in opposition to it. The "love of earth" is the "recognition of God 9 3 ", and to "understand and take nature as she is — is to get on the true divine highroad 9 4 ". At bottom, however, Meredith is neither a metaphysical thinker nor strongly endowed with religious instincts, and the strength of his gospel of nature is more in its human significance than in any pantheistic mysticism. The sane humanity of a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Molière, is his ideal: "Thy greatest knew thee, Mother Earth", he says in his sonnet to Shakespeare. A right instinct taught him to see in this ideal the best corrective for the spiritual aridity of Victorian England, where he saw unbounded materialism masquerading in the empty shell of Puritanism and in an excessive and equally unauthentic refinement. The other ideal Meredith set up as a goal for his countrymen was that of a true civilization, at first sight an aim distinctly contradictory to his worship of nature. If his poetry breathes a faith in nature, a study like the famous Essay on Comedy is filled with an equally ardent enthusiasm for the graces of supreme culture, and in the novels he belabours his contemporaries alternately for denying nature and for not being civilized. It is questionable whether Meredith ever thought out the full consequences of his double allegiance, but for practical purposes he escaped from the conflict by his contention that true civilization can never be in disharmony with nature. Meredith's conception of the ideal civilization is not at all concerned with the material side. He does not share the enthusiasm of his contemporaries for the progress of inventions, although he also does not regard them with any special distrust. The civilization he is thinking of is purely a spiritual one, one that should substitute for the prudery and sentimentality and false refinement of English society in his day a spirit of dignity, grace, humanity, on the basis not of some rigid code of conduct but of a pervading inward standard. The artist, the poet and the thinker must contribute to create this standard, but it must be a social reality more pervasive than the individual expressions of genius. Meredith naturally does not consider it possible for a whole nation to be brought to this high level. Only an élite will ever reach it. But a nation's civilization will be measured by its possession of an élite of this sort, which in turn will naturally profoundly influence the other groups of the population. Meredith's ideal is thus that of a sublimated good society. He comes closest to describing it in the Essay on Comedy, in elaboration of his thesis that great comedy can only arise in a period of exceptionally high social culture. "A society of cultivated men and women is required, wherein 93 w

Beauchamp's Career, Letters I, p. 136.

p. 510.

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ideas are current, and the perceptions quick, that he (the comic poet) may be s u p p l i e d with matter and an audience" ( E . C., p. 75). And the guiding spirit in this civilized élite would be very similar to Meredith's great conception of the Comic Spirit, the "genius of thoughtful laughter". F o r such a high standard of civilization can only be sustained if its bearers are c a p a b l e of an incessant self-criticism, and one that extends f a r beyond the preacher's and the grim satirist's scope. They must be sensitive to that more subtle criticism embodied f o r Meredith in h i g h comedy worthy of the name, they must be ready to sense instantaneously what is ridiculous in the slightest intrusion of the disharmonious, the unnatural and the unsocial, even if clothed in the disguise of a superficial refinement. Meredith's indictment of E n g l i s h " g o o d society" of his day is that it arrogantly assumes a position of dictatorship in civilization without living u p to this inward standard. T h e f o r m is there, but not the content. I n the E n g l i s h readiness to recognize an intangible authority exercised by a group supposed to embody the highest conception of civilized culture there was offered the opportunity of realizing the ideals h e himself was promulgating. F o r that reason he does not attack the idea of society itself, but merely the deficiencies h e finds in its contemporary form. "Society is our one tangible gain, our one roofing and flooring in a world of most uncertain s t r u c t u r e s 9 5 " , it is " r i g h t in the m a i n 9 6 " , " t h e best thing we h a v e 9 7 " , but it is also " a crazy vessel worked by a crew that formerly practised piracy, and now, in expiation, professes p i o u s n e s s 9 7 " . T h e sins of Victorian society that he devotes his novels to uncovering are, in addition to snobbery, which takes most of his attention in the earlier period of his work, sentimentality 9 8 , e g o i s m 9 8 , hypocritical prudery, and an unworthy attitude toward women. Snobbery and related themes occupied the foreground in his work f r o m 1860 to 1870. In his first two novels, The Shaving of Shagpat (1855) and The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) we find only slight anticipations of the theme, but with Evan Harrington he begins an almost unbroken decade of preoccupation with the subject. T h e three m a i n novels in this period are Evan Harrington, Sandra Belloni and Harry Richmond, but the two short-stories, The House on the Beach and The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper, both dealing with snobbery as their m a i n theme, also fall into this period by their d a t e of composition, although b o t h of them were only published somewhat later. Beauchamp, p. 273. Diana, p. 268. 8 7 ibid., p. 175. "Sentimentality" and "egoism" have rather special meanings in Meredith's vocabulary. Sentimentality is his term for the unreal idea of "refinement" dominating Victorian society (best defined in Sandra Belloni), and the egoism he is thinking of, which he calls more, specifically, but not much more illuminatingly, "social egoism", is not the universal instinct of self-preservation but the disguised form of civilized egoism masquerading as magnanimity, as embodied in the immortal Sir Willoughby Patterne ( T h e Egoist). 96

96

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Anticipations of the theme.

The Shaving of Shagpat,

Richard

Feverel.

Meredith's first longer prose production, The Shaving of Shagpat, written when he was twenty-seven, takes his readers into regions far removed from contemporary English life — on the surface, at any rate. In this oriental tale, modelled on the Arabian Nights, and reminding, in certain aspects of its plot though not in manner, of Southey's Thalaba, Meredith tests the scope of his literary gifts by combining passages of fanciful beauty, filled with the mystery and voluptuousness that his oriental setting permitted of, with humorous portrayal of human nature in all its unheroic reality. Shagpat, the shaving of whose abundant head of hair is the great Event for which Shibli Bagarag was chosen by a mysterious fate, is, we discover in the first paragraph of the book, a clothier and the descendant of clothiers. Here the psycho-analytically inclined reader is likely to pounce upon evidence of Meredith's subconscious at work at the transfiguration of tailordom. For Shagpat, the illustrious, was possessed of the Identical, a magic hair that defied razors and conferred upon him an enchantment so powerful that not only all the inhabitants of his own city but also the kings of all the neighbouring lands were forced to do him homage. The glorification-of-tailordom interpretation, however, does not hold up against the rest of the tale, for it soon becomes obvious that the shaggy-pated one is a far from glorious character. His rôle in the story is, in fact, that of the incarnation of Human Stupidity and its power, and Shibli Bagarag is the young crusader who, by the workings of fate, is destined to deprive him of his magic influence. Just what induced Meredith to make him a clothier remains a mystery. It is hardly likely that he did it without any thought at all of his own connection with tailordom. H e may merely have enjoyed his own little joke in thus relieving his resentment, under the cover of an oriental tale, against the trade that threw the shadow of the ridiculous over his own origins. The uncouth Shagpat is a worthy partner to "Demogorgon", that other personification of tailordom that plays so great a rôle in Evan Harrington. With Shibli Bagarag's many adventures, with the "thwackings" he received for the good of his character, the strange enchanted lands he had to visit in search of the magic sword that was alone powerful enough to subdue the Identical, the genies that helped him or that he had to overcome, and with the beautiful daughter of the Vizier, Noorna bin Noorka, the guiding star of his adventures, we are not concerned. But it has been noted that this little book contains in germ a surprising number of the themes and situations that Meredith was to utilize in his later work, and among the others we also find some of the situations that were to play a considerable rôle in those of Meredith's books that deal especially with snobbery. 125

Shibli Bagarag, a young barber, sets out then, with his barber's tackle in his hand and with the counsels of Noorna, wise in all the mysteries of magic, in his ears, to get the Sword of Aklis. He is spurred on not only by the love of Noorna but likewise by the desire to rehabilitate the good name of barbers, who are "abased, trodden underfoot, given over to the sneers and the gibes of them that flatter the powerful ones", all because of the fashion of hairiness started by Shagpat, who was afraid of losing the Identical. Many obstacles and many temptations have to be overcome by him, and he is ever and again tripped up at critical moments by his own folly. His vanity was his special weak point, and he had to have several very unpleasant experiences before he could learn to resist flatteries. And although apparently quite free of any self-consciousness about his social position, in this Arabian Nights atmosphere of the alllevelling power of magic, where the barber and the garlic-seller and the tailor can converse with the king and aspire to the daughter of the Vizier, he is still especially susceptible to the temptation of worldly prestige. There is, for example, the scene with the queen and enchantress Rabesqurat, who, after she had eaten and drunk with him, spoke guilefully "O youth, art thou not a prince in the country thou comest f r o m ? " In a moment "the pride of the barber forsook him, and he equivocated, saying, 'O Queen! there is among the stars somewhere, as was divined by the readers of planets, a crown hanging for me, and I search a point of earth to intercept its fall'." The queen "marked him beguiled by vanity, and put sweetmeats to his mouth, exclaiming, 'Thy manners be those of a p r i n c e ! ' " Shibli is here a distinct precursor of Evan Harrington. The queen almost makes him forget his great task by singing to him of love and of one with whom she wished to share her state — "such as he". From this first snare Shibli is saved by bethinking himself of the magic liquor he has, one drop of which on the Queens lips causes her to speak the truth in spite of herself: "O Shibli Bagarag! nephew of the barber! weak youth! small prince of the tackle! have I not nigh fascinated thee? And thou wilt forfeit those two silly eyes of thine. So fetter I the strong! and I blunt the barb of high intents!" Shibli is put to shame and departs to continue his quest. This one lesson does not suffice, however, to save him from more serious entanglements later. In the palace of Aklis he is surrounded by dancing maidens of matchless beauty, who greet him as their king, and tell him that they have been waiting to crown him. He remembers his first experience, but their flatteries beguile him and he calls for the crown. They take him to a throne, where he sits "calmly, serenely, like a Sultan of the great race accustomed to sovereignty, tempering the awfulness of his brows with benignant glances". As the maidens depart, he hears one of them call mockingly "The ninety and ninth!" and he realizes that he has been duped. He tries to descend from the throne but finds to his dismay that he cannot rise from it nor take off his crown. The throne is 126

suddenly transported into a room where he sees multitudes of men sitting solemn and motionless on thrones like his own. His sense of humour overpowers him and he bursts into laughter, upon which he is released f r o m the throne as by a charm. B u t the crown remains fixed on his head, and a glance at a mirror shows him that it is a crown of jewelled asses' ears. Donkeys and monkeys come to do him reverence as their king, and, now thoroughly humbled, he sets out to discover the means of getting rid of his crown. He finally succeeds, but not without losing much valuable time and seriously endangering the success of his quest. In Shibli B a g a r a g Meredith has shadowed forth his E v a n Harringtons and H a r r y Richmonds, young men who will h a v e to fight with the temptation of passing for m o r e than they are, and has expressed his faith in the m a g i c power of laughter to rescue men f r o m the scrapes their vanity gets them into. I n Meredith's first real novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel we find another young m a n whose youth is tested in many ways, but in spite of the fact that the setting here is in contemporary England, there is less in the hero's struggles that is relevant to our present subject than in Shagpat. T h e Ordeal is, in fact, a novel in which the question of snobbery as a problem of character is given less prominence than in any other of Meredith's early novels. T h e only stage in Richard Feverel's career where Meredith shows him definitely in danger of slipping into snobbery is in his rivalry with one of his playfellows, who h a d refused to take the attitude of admiring subserviency that Richard, on the basis of his exploits in sport and of his natural gifts of leadership, was accustomed to meeting with. Since his rival was his equal in all the fields of sport and exploit, Richard f o u n d it useless to affect to scorn him. " F i n d i n g that manoeuvre would not do, R i c h a r d was p r o m p t e d once or twice to entrench himself behind his greater wealth, and his position; but he soon abandoned that also, partly because his chilliness to ridicule told him he was exposing himself, and chiefly that his heart was too chivalrous" (Ch. 15, p. 126). T h e sin of P r i d e was not to be spared the young prince of R a y n h a m Abbey, but it was less snobbish p r i d e than a naive self-centredness, the inevitable result of the abnormal centring of attention on his destinies caused by his father's " S y s t e m " . " P e r h a p s the boy with a Destiny was growing up a trifle too conscious of it. His generosity to his occasional companions was princely, but was exercised something too much in the manner of a prince; and notwithstanding his contempt for baseness, he would overlook that m o r e easily than an offence to his p r i d e " (Ch. 15, p. 126). Meredith paints Richard's condescension to the farmer lads of the neighbourhood with gentle humour, p e r h a p s being reminded of certain stages of his own childhood, and sees in it, alongside of the egoistic dangers, something c a p a b l e of being transformed into good. When R i c h a r d was deep in the scrape caused by his burning a farmer's hay-rick, 127

his uncle Austin Wentworth helped him to see the difference between two kinds of pride, a favourite theme with Meredith. Richard's accomplice, the ploughman Tom Bakewell, had refused to implicate the boy, but Richard was disgusted by his lack of spirit in refusing his help to escape from custody, and was too proud to go to Farmer Blaize and ask him to let the man off as a favour. Austin points out that Richard is accepting a favour from the ploughman. The idea is startling to Richard, and the idea of poor clumsy Tom in prison affects him with a strange sense of the ridiculous and the touching. There lay p o o i T o m ; hob-nail T o m ! a bacon-munching, reckless, beer-swilling animal! and yet a m a n ; a dear brave human heart notwithstanding; capable of devotion and unselfishness. The boy's better spirit was touched, and kindled his imagination to realize the abject figure of poor clodpole Tom, and surrounded it with a halo of mournful light. His soul was alive. Feelings he had never known streamed in upon him, as from an ethereal casement: an unwonted tenderness: an embracing humour: a consciousness of some ineffable glory: an irradiation of the features of humanity. All this was in the bosom of the boy, and through it all, the vision of an actual hob-nail Tom, coarse, unkempt, open from ear to ear. . . . He laughed at him, and wept over him, while he shrank from him. It was a genial strife of the Angel in him with constituents less divine; but the Angel was uppermost and led the van: extinguished loathings: humanized laughter: transfigured Pride — Pride that would persistently contemplate the corduroys of gaping Tom and cry to Richard . . . 'Behold your b e n e f a c t o r ! ' " (Ch. 10, p. 88 f.)

This sudden, humorous-mystic broadening of Richard's human sympathies was the best kind of antidote for incipient snobbery. There are also glances, at the pride of the Feverels in their pedigree (Ch. 2) and slight glimpses of the titillation of the Rip ton family's snobbery at the favour their son enjoyed at Raynham Abbey, all handled with an air of ironic detachment. Meredith was not ready to attack the problem of snobbery at length and gives it only the attention that any sketch of English society made necessary. The chief foundation of the plot is, it is true, Sir Austin's refusal to accept the humble bride his son has chosen; in another man than Sir Austin this would be easily put to the account of pure snobbery, but in his case the situation is not so clear. His stubbornness on this point is really the revelation of the fundamental egoism of his plan of education — his son should marry when and whom the System, i. e. his father, indicated, and Sir Austin was capable of making himself blind and deaf to the claims of anyone else. On the other hand, the fact that the girl was the niece of a farmer was certainly not without its influence in prejudicing him against her, although Meredith makes comparatively little of this point and probably arranged things in this way chiefly in order to explain how Sir Austin could have the world on his side in his obstinacy. This novel is in many respects a comedy of humours, with Adrian and his worldly wisdom, Hippias and his hypochondria, Lady Blandish and her attitude of perpetual feminine adoration of superior man (until she comes out of the frame in her final disillusionment about Sir Austin), and Sir Austin is so absorbed by his 128

h u m o u r , his System, his puritanical pedantry and tyranny, t h a t t h e r e is hardly room in his character for other problems. Meredith frequently indicates, however, how much of unconscious p r e j u d i c e enters into his rationalism and probably intended t h e reader to see t h e ambiguity of Sir Austin's adoration of "good blood", which is t h e ostensible justification f o r his rejection of Lucy. Sir Austin considers himself to be moved by purely eugenic considerations in seeking a wife f o r his son, h u t absolutely refuses to listen to those who would tell h i m of t h e merits of t h e simple girl Richard has chosen, and w h o m later, b u t only a f t e r h e is h u m b l e d and worn down by t h e long estrangement f r o m his son, h e admits to have t h e qualities h e was himself seeking for. And in his p r i d e in the "good p u r e blood" t h a t h e counts on to support R i c h a r d t h e r e is also a certain confusion of issues, since Richard's m o t h e r was a hysterical woman who h a d r u n off with a poet, and according to Meredith's account certain generations of t h e Feverels were afflicted by a peculiar m a l a d y t h a t h a r d l y m a d e t h e m t h e best eugenic material. I n his racial theories as in his distrust of women Sir Austin was guided m u c h more by p r e j u d i c e t h a n h e knew. If t h e role played by snobbery in the characters of the figures of this story is comparatively slight, t h e r e is nevertheless one passage discussing t h e English love of lords t h a t is of distinct interest. T h e speaker, it must b e noted, is Adrian, t h e Wise Youth, and the passage t h e r e f o r e partakes somewhat of his cynical h u m o u r . (From a letter to Lady Blandish) "I have for the first time in my career a field of lords to study. I think it is not without meaning that I am introduced to it by a yeoman's niece. The language of the two social extremes is similar . . . Their pursuits are identical; but that one has money, or as the Pilgrim terms it, v a n t a g e , and the other has not. Their ideas seem to have a special relationship in the peculiarity of stopping where they have begun. Young Tom Blaize with vantage would be Lord Mountfalcon . . . This sounds dreadfully democratic. Pray don't be alarmed. The discovery of the affinity between the two extremes of the Royal British Oak has made me thrice conservative. I see now that the national love of a lord is less subservience than a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat on one's image, as it were, to bow to it. I see, too, the admirable wisdom of our system: — could there be a finer balance of power than in a community where men intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a gold-lace hat on? How soothing it is to Intellect — that noble rebel . . . — to stand, and bow, and know itself superior! This exquisite compensation maintains the balance; whereas that period anticipated by the Pilgrim, when science shall have produced an intellectual aristocracy, is indeed horrible to contemplate. For what despotism is so black as one the mind cannot challenge. 'Twill be an Iron Age." (Ch. 38, p. 419 f.)

These paradoxical words are Meredith's first contribution to t h e theoretics of snobbery — h e r e to only t h a t division of snobbery t h a t Thackeray called lordolatry. If we search b e h i n d t h e irony of the passage and beh i n d what is obviously p u t in just to keep in character with the speaker A d r i a n (the expression of f a i t h in conservatism, for instance — Meredith himself was at this period more f o r the r a d i c a l side, as is shown by t h e 129

evident sympathy with which he draws the character of Austin Wentworth, the republican) we find the core of the passage in the remark that the national love of a lord is "less subservience than a form of self-love". I n addition to a certain pleasure in the paradoxical, this statement probably also reflects a reaction against Thackeray's extreme insistence on the servility of English admiration of the aristocracy. T h e passage is further remarkable for the comparative sharpness of the criticism of the aristocracy. There can be little doubt that Meredith had himself felt how soothing it was to intellect to stand, and bow, and feel itself superior. By putting these remarks into the mouth of Adrian, the cynical accepter of the way of the world, he adroitly avoids the suspicion of giving expression to any sort of republican resentment. It must also be observed that the lord in the story, Mountfalcon, is, although living up the description "intellectually nil", by no means a wholly unsympathetic figure, in spite of the ignoble part he is called on to play. His real devotion to Lucy makes us forgive his designs on her, especially as it contrasts favourably with her young husband Richard's temporary neglect. If Richard with his weakness reminds us of the Thackerayan heroes, Lord Mountfalcon is far from the wicked but witty aristocratic villains of the older writer. Still this comparative tolerance is by no means necessarily proof of an entire objectivity on Meredith's part, since there could be a much more subtle satisfaction in dismissing the aristocracy as amiable but stupid than in railing at it as wicked but granting it wit. A snobbish family in a world of snobs: Evan Harrington. With Evan Harrington, or He Would be a Gentleman, Meredith opens his real offensive against snobbery. Like Vanity Fair, this is a book in which it is easier to count the non-snobs than the snobs. With the exception of Lady Jocelyn and perhaps Andrew Cogglesby, the good brewer, all the characters are, in their respective social ranks, from the lady's maids to the young lord, tinged with snobbery of one sort or other, and in greater or less degree. Mrs. Mel might also be excepted, but in her defiant absence of social aspiration there is something verging on antisnobbery. J. W. Beach has called Evan Harrington Meredith's Book of Sreofcs" and S. Howe suggests the title, "A Snob's Progress 1 0 0 ". It is also the only novel of Meredith's (barring oversight) in which the word snob occurs, although only in the older sense, as noted in the Introduction. The two chief threads of interest in the book are on the one hand the adventures of the Harrington family, headed by the brilliant Countess de Saldar, in overcoming the shadow of the tailor's shop, and on the other 99 100

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George Meredith and the Comic Spirit. Wilhelm Meister and his English Kinsmen,

N. Y. 1930.

the inward development of the young Evan, who, to prove himself a gentleman, has to overcome the shame of his origins that circumstances and his sisters do their best to instil in him. The triumph of the book is the portrait of Evan's sister Louisa, the Countess de Saldar. All three daughters of the sporting tailor, Melchisedec Harrington, had married well, and all three devoted the greater part of their energies to concealing the profession of their father. The eldest sister, Caroline, had married a naval officer. He knew the truth, having met her at a ball in Lymport, but forced her, the least snobbish of the sisters, to keep it a secret for the sake of his advancement. Harriet, the second sister, married a brewer, extremely rich and a Member of Parliament. "Thus Joy clapped hands a second time, and Horror deepened its shadows" (p. 18). Since Harriet's husband was himself of humble parentage, one might have thought that she would have no embarrassment in telling him the truth; but she always referred to her family as the "county people", describing them as so eccentrically exclusive that they desired not to meet their son-in-law, and was even more timid about possible revelations than her sisters, having her good-hearted husband in such a position of contented submission, based on the tacit admission that she had condescended in giving him her hand, that she could not bear the thought of the diminishment her moral stature would suffer if the truth were known. The third sister, Louisa, whose career was launched from the drawing-rooms of her sisters, had fascinated a young Portuguese diplomat, the Count de Saldar, to whom, to save trouble, she had given the impression that her parents were dead. Of the three "daughters of the shears" she had escaped the farthest from the shop, with the glorious disguise given by a title and with the many miles of distance between England and Portugal to make her forget the very existence of tailor shops. Louisa, who at the beginning of the story returns to England with her husband because of some political upheavals in Portugal, conceives it as her life mission to fight against "Demogorgon", as she calls the shop. The word "shop" she cannot bring herself to pronounce: "What revelation so awful as that he has stood in a — in a — boutique?" (Ch. 9, p. 85.) Her passion for everything aristocratic has something of the romantic enthusiasm that spurre ! on the Great Mel. She revels in the more florid expressions of aristocratic life that she finds in her new Southern home, and ends by half persuading herself that she is Portuguese. Partly out of this conviction, and partly from her keen sense for the psychologically effective, she affects a foreign accent and refers continually to "you English", with many flings at English stolidity and lack of polished manners. Evan, who, as the only member of the family whose position in the world is still uncertain, becomes her especial care, she had taken to Portugal in the hope of his acquiring something of the courtly grace of the Latin nobility. As the self-appointed general in the battle against 131

Demogorgon, she marshals all her forces — her wit, her good looks, her conqering way with men, her power of intrigue, and her utter unscrupulousness — to secure Evan's marriage with Rose Jocelyn, the granddaughter of Lord Elburne. As the story opens, we find her hopeful of success in her plans. Evan and Rose have become acquainted in Portugal, where Rose's uncle had been serving as a diplomat, and the countess is utilizing the return trip on board the Jocasta to manoeuvre for an invitation to Beckley Court, the home of the Jocelyns, where she hopes that the budding friendship will ripen into something more. A perverse fate throws obstacle after obstacle in her way and gives us the opportunity of seeing the resourcefulness and virtuosity of the lady when in dangerous situations. First of all, Evan shows signs of a quixotic desire to tell Rose about his ancestry. The Countess nips that impulse in the bud by playing on his affection for Rose, which, at the moment of parting, begins to take on serious proportions. Then the death of her father, laden with debts, threatens to frustrate all her plans. Mrs. Mel, the strong-minded wife whose Saxon goodsense had kept the gallant tailor from utter ruin, insists that Evan shall save his father's honour by taking over the shop and paying his debts. This prosaic conception of honour is foreign to the Countess, and she paints for Evan the most heart-rending pictures of a tailor's fate — "the eternal contemplation of gentlemen's legs" — in the hope of awakening his disgust for his mother's plan. She almost wins him over, but then makes one of the mistakes that her lack of comprehension for her young brother's idealistic sense of honour sometimes let her slip into. She cannot refrain from boasting in the Lymport circle about Evan's approaching engagement to the heiress of Beckley Court. Evan is shocked at her lack of delicacy in thus publicly coupling their names, and in self-torturing reaction decides to carry out his mother's plan. It is in the end more chance than the Countess's efforts that brings Evan to Beckley Court, where the Countess launches her big campaign. It is at Beckley Court that the comedy enters into its full swing. We see her surrounded by dangers untold. Beckley is not far from Lympdrt, and the first person the Countess meets is George Uploft, a country squire who had formerly entertained a weakness for her as a girl. With bewildering daring the Countess represses a first instinct of flight, and merely emphasizes her foreign disguise, with remarkable success, temporarily at least. Meredith confides to the reader that her bravery was not only the result of her self-sacrificing devotion to her brother's interests coupled with the intrigante's taste for the spice of danger, but was coloured by a little human weakness: nothing more than "the simple desire to be located, if but for a day or two, on the footing of her present rank, in the English country-house of an offshoot of our aristocracy". In spite of her scorn for things English, she could not really feel the full triumph of her rank and of her acceptance into the first circles of society in Por132

tugal, until she had somehow seen it acknowledged in the kind of English aristocratic home that had represented the peak of her ambitions as a schoolgirl. Further difficulties are put in her way by an indiscretion of Evan's, which sows some suspicions in the minds of certain of the guests at Beckley as to whether the Countess's claims to descent from a certain highly respectable Sir Abraham Harrington were authentic. But in the thick of danger her genius shows its true metal. When the whispers among the guests can no longer escape her notice, she rises to heights of sublime impertinence that make the shrewdest of her opponents doubt their most reliable information. The two climaxes of the comedy are the evening at which the children of the tailor — the Countess, Evan, and Caroline, who has been summoned by the Countess as an ally useful through her beauty — have to "digest the Great Mel at dinner", and the picnic which brings the more melodramatic sides of the comedy to a climax. On the first occasion, the conversation having turned upon the adventures of the Great Mel, whose reputation had taken on legendary proportions in the neighbourhood, Caroline and Louisa, paralysed by their mental anguish, are helpless to change the topic of conversation, and have to listen for the course of a long dinner to one undignified anecdote after another of their father's exploits, and to descriptions of themselves as the "Three Graces of Lymport", until the more tender-spirited Caroline faints and has to be carried away. At the second occasion we see the Countess, faced by almost sure defeat, making her last gallant but hopeless stand. The arrival of Mrs. Mel, who demands her son and proclaims him a tailor, makes all further pretence useless. It is true that Mrs. Mel's announcement taught most of the circle at Beckley nothing new; they had known the Harrington genealogy for some time, and the Countess knew that they knew it. But to her there was all the difference in the world between a comforting if utterly transparent fiction of ignorance and the situation brought on by the actual pronouncement of the word tailor in public. The bitterness of defeat is brought home to her when she finds that even the servants take a superior air toward her, and an impertinence on the part of her maid reduces the Countess, for the first time in her battle, to a flood of tears. If she refused to retreat even then, and preferred, for the sake of the chance at the fortune of the moribund Mrs. Bonner, to stay on at the scene of her disgrace, this would seem to indicate that the intrigante was stronger in her than the snob, were it not that her designs on the fortune were just another side of her great battle against Demogorgon. She is cynical enough in her social psychology to realize that a temporary humiliation will be wiped out by an increase in fortune. In the last part of the story things are taken out of the hands of the Countess. Her spirit broken by what she considers the treachery of Evan 133

and her sister Caroline, who both refused to obey her commands in the campaigns she was waging for their benefit, she lets things take their course, with only an occasional flare of the old intriguing spirit. Evan's final success takes her quite by surprise, although of course she immediately rallies and takes all the credit for it. Her ultimate conversion to Catholicism, in which she sees the only true refuge from Demogorgon, comes as no surprise, hints of her leanings in that direction having been given throughout the book. The religion of her husband has a charm for her in her character of snob, in that it seems to separate her definitely from the English and to make of her the complete foreign noblewoman, and in her character of intrigante in that the institution of the confessional offers, to her thinking, the only way of wiping out the many untruths with which her devotion to her mission had caused her to burden her hopes of salvation. Her letter from Rome to one of her sisters, with which the book ends, is a triumph of confusion between her worldly and her other-worldly ambitions: " I have at last found a haven, a refuge. . . . Y o u think that you have quite conquered the dreadfulness of our origin. My love, I smile at you! I k n o w it to be impossible for the Protestant heresy to offer a shade of consolation. Earthlyborn, it rather e n c o u r a g e s earthly distinctions. It is the sweet sovereign Pontiff alone who gathers all in his arms, not excepting tailors."

After rhapsodizing about the "gentlemanliness of these infinitely maligned Jesuits" and the charms of the Roman nobility — "Grace, refinement, intrigue, perfect comprehension of your ideas, wishes . . . ! Here you have every worldly charm, and all crowned by Religion!" she advises her sister to come to Rome: " I e n g a g e to marry you to a Roman prince the very next morning or two . . . See how your Louy has given up the world and its vanities! Postcript: I am persuaded of this: that it is utterly impossible for a man to be a t r u e g e n t l e m a n who is not of the true Church. . . . Whatever Evan may think of himself or Rose think of him, I k n o w t h e t h i n g . "

Meredith might be suspected of giving this turning to the character of his extraordinary heroine merely for the sake of varying and heightening the comic effect of his closing pages, but it is likely that he intended a much closer connection with her character to be perceived in this final transformation. In the Countess's shallow religiosity there is the logical development of the two-sidedness that her character has shown from the very beginning. With all her shifts and dodges, with her lies and her occasional flashes of shameless glorying in successful deceit, she is by no means possessed of a consistent cynicism. She is, for instance, much more troubled by remorse than Becky Sharp. Her conscience is not absent, it is merely overpowered by the force of her ambition, which makes her act but not think like any hardened adventuress. It is this strain that forces her to have recourse to a habit of self-deception, and it is as a tool of 134

self-deception that she regards the Catholic confessional 1 0 1 . It satisfies her craving for a method of persuading herself that things that have happened can be wiped out as if they had not happened. And this craving and capacity for self-deception is the key to the character of the upstart snob when the characterization is carried out to its logical conclusion. It would indeed seem that behind all the comedy, even farce, supplied by the Countess, Meredith had in mind an almost scientific study of the psychology of the upstart snob. Galland calls her "le plus beau spécimen qui soit du 'snob parvenu' ", and it is as a specimen that her figure presents itself when analysed. By pushing things to extremes Meredith has sacrificed a certain measure of the illusion of reality — we do not really believe that a woman exactly like the Countess ever lived — but mere realism was less important to him than the clear-cut emergence of a comic idea. The determining elements in the Countess's character are her genuine horror of trade and tradesmen, her belief in birth and rank, and her belief in the destiny of her own family. The incompatibility of these three views is the source of the curiously involved quality of her thinking. Her horror of tradesmen and her belief in the all-importance of aristocratic birth are not merely pose calculated to throw dust in the eyes of other people, they are matters of conviction. Lady Jocelyn's indifference to questions of rank she cannot understand. She writes to her sister that Lady Jocelyn is "most eccentric": "it soon became clear to me that Lady Jocelyn is the r a n k e s t of Radicals. My secret suspicion is, that she is a person of no birth whatever, wherever her money came from" (Ch. 14, p. 146). When the opposition of her principles and her actual position becomes too crass and imposes itself upon her full consciousness, she takes refuge in her father's fiction that his birth was mysteriously noble: "had poor Papa been l e g i t i m i z e d , he would have been a nobleman" (p. 204), but we are given the impression that she does not actually grant this theory much more belief than her sisters; most of the time she remains in a vaguer state of belief in some kind of exceptional situation given her family out of all the denizens of Tradeland. Meredith enjoys bringing out the equivocal nature of this undemocratic assertion of equality: Accept in the Countess the heroine who is combatting class-prejudices, and surely she is pre-eminently noteworthy. True, she fights only for her family, and is virtually the champion of the opposing institution misplaced. That does not matter: the fates may have done it purposely: by conquering she establishes a principle. (Ch. 30, p. 324.) 1 0 1 It need hardly be observed that in the Countess's peculiar conception of religion and Catholicism Meredith was not attacking the church itself or true religious feeling. It is possible, however, that in the contrast between Evan's "pagan virtue" (see Ch. 34, p. 365 etc.) and the Countess's seeking of refuge in supernaturalism there was an intentional emphasis on the opposition between the two attitudes offered to his own choice: the lonely heroism of a self-imposed code of virtue as contrasted with the more comforting submission to religious guidance.

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T h e chapter in which "the daughters of the great Mel have to digest him at dinner", as well as having to digest themselves as the " T h r e e Graces of Lymport", is the point in their career where they have to commit a kind of moral suicide and patricide. Having pushed the inner contradiction of the upstart's attitude to this point of intensity, Meredith was forced, in order to make the Countess credible, to make of her a devotee of the great art of self-deception. An instance of this capacity is her reaction to the report that Evan had proclaimed himself publicly a tailor: " S h e was positive Evan had committed himself in some manner. As it did not suit her to think so, she at once encouraged an imaginary conversation, in which she took the argument that it was quite impossible that Evan could have been so mad . . . " (p. 144). And up to the very last moment before her "retreat from Beckley" we find her taking refuge in " t h e Castle of Negation from the whole army of facts". Her capacity for forgetting that she is English is equalled by her capacity of forgetting the tailor's shop, as long as no-one knows of it. She exclaims with genuine incredulity, when she once more sees the dingy surroundings of her youth, "that she should have sprung from t h i s ! " (p. 85), reminding us here, as Galland remarks, of Madelon in the Précieuses Ridicules: " J ' a i peine à me persuader que j e puisse être véritablement sa fille" (Sc. V). And alongside of her instinctive mastery of practical psychology she has curious lapses into childish superstition. Like Richmond Roy, her masculine counterpart in a later novel, she believes in her "star", and when her mother appears at the picnic to blast her intrigues just after she had finally made a flat statement claiming Sir Abraham Harrington as her father, she has the feeling that it is a blow "struck by the poor gentleman's outraged ghost". As long as. she remained by the "lie indirect" she could, in the midst of all her imposture, persuade herself that her conscience could be at rest. The Countess de Saldar fulfils the pattern of the parvenu snob more completely than Becky Sharp, because she is more strongly possessed by the trait that distinguished the snob from the "Hochstapler" : the necessity for believing in his pretensions. Becky has, as Behmenburg contends, the vitality of an "unbroken nature" but by that token she is less the true snob. Their reaction to defeat is characteristic of the differences in tlieir natures. The Countess could never have settled down to Becky's philosophic acceptance of low life, faute de mieux, nor would Becky have been satisfied by the immaterial consolations of membership in the spiritual aristocracy of the Church. The hero of the story, Evan, is a young man who suffers the fate of playing "second fiddle", as Meredith puts it, through much of the story, first to his sister, who takes over the work of his ascent into Society, and then to his beloved Rose, who, more favoured by circumstances than he, is capable of being somewhat more courageous in overcoming the last obstacles in his way. It is thanks to these two feminine allies that he is 136

able, after many vicissitudes, to prove his right to the title of gentleman in the eyes of the world but it is only thanks to the good stuff fundamental in his character that at the same time he preserves his claim to the title according to Meredith's more exacting standard. Endowed with the same taste for refinement possessed by his sister and his father, Evan was, unlike his sister, also blessed with an unusually tender sense of honour, which, though ideally the essence of gentlemanhood, was something of an inconvenience for a person in his position. In addition, he had inherited something of his mother's downrightness and shrank by instinct from the hypocrisy into which his sister's manoeuvres plunged him. The Saxon Dawleys fought with the Celtic Harringtons in him, and when the Saxon had the upper hand, his sister despaired of him: "As well try to raise the dead as a Dawley from the dust he grovels i n ! " (p. 356). Torn between love and duty like any hero of Corneille, Evan vacillates longer than is quite heroic, but the peculiar complication of the issues in his case must be his excuse. The Cornelian hero is faced by tragic issues, but Evan found the path of duty barred not only by loss of his love but by the shadow of the ridiculous — a sour coating to a bitter pill. And the Mephistopheles who whispered in his ear had the persuasive tongue of the Countess de Saldar, who had a genius for manoeuvring him into positions where returning was harder than go o'er, and who had had the further advantage of indoctrinating him with her prejudices when he was not yet out of childhood. If all that is not enough, Meredith points to his youth as the decisive excuse: Are you impatient with this young m a n ? He has little character for Most youths are like Pope's women; they have no character at all. a character that does not wait for circumstances to shape it, is of in the race that must he run. (Ch.

the moment. And indeed small worth 6, p. 50.)

The first sign of the struggle in our hero's breast is shown on board the ship returning from Portugal, when we find him appalling the Countess by threatening to tell Rose of his father's profession. His sister's protests, coupled with a few naively depreciatory remarks of Rose's about tradesmen, silence him, and we find him taking a certain amount of credit for sparing his sister's feelings, a first capitulation to self-deception. The news of his father's death arouses in him a kind of idealization of tailors that makes him side against Rose with some bitterness. Hitherto, in passive obedience to the indoctrination of the Countess, Evan had looked on tailors as the proscribed race of modern society. He had pitied his father as a man superior to his fate; but despite the fitfully honest promptings with Rose (tempting to him because of the wondrous chivalry they argued, and at bottom false probably as the hypocrisy they affected to combat), he had been by no means sorry the world saw not the spot on himself. Other sensations beset him now. . . . The clear result of Evan's solitary musing was to cast a sort of halo over Tailordom. Death stood over the pale dead man, his father, and dared the world to sneer at him. (p. 50.)

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In this passage Meredith indicates how complicated Evan's situation is, by warning us that even the promptings of duty are not always to be taken at their full face value. The warning proves useful, for in the next scene we find the halo falling abruptly from Tailordom when Evan is faced by his mother's proposal that to pay his father's debts he shall himself become a tailor. The picture of himself as tailor is so far beyond his power of imagination that he dismisses the idea as ridiculous. His mother's quiet force and her inexorable presentation of the facts, coupled with her appeal to his care for his father's honour, end by conquering him, and we find him flying once more to a mood of exalted self-sacrifice. He renounces his hopes of marrying Rose and promises to enter the shop. The unreliable nature of such excited heroics is disclosed, however, when his Mephistopheles of the honeyed accents arrives and paints on the one hand the horrors of the situation he has chosen for himself and on the other, not quite truthfully, perhaps, the assurances she has secured from Rose of the more than favourable chances Evan has in her affections. He is about to yield, and it is only thanks to the slip in the Countess's psychological tactics, her premature announcement of his engagement, that Evan pulls himself together and sets out secretly for London to enter the training for his new profession. On the road to London he goes through his Slough of Despond. "He wished not to clothe the generation. What was to the remainder of the sons of Adam simply the brand of expulsion from Paradise, was to him hell" (p. 97). His despair alternates with a dangerous kind of exaltation, a defiant dramatization of himself, that reaches climactic expression as a result of a series of happenings at the inn where he stops for the night. The chance meeting with an old school-fellow, the grotesque and vulgar John Raikes, the invitation to join the festivities presided over by the mysterious eccentric "Old Tom" — who, as will be remembered by readers of the book, later turns out to the brother of Harriet's brewer husband — the plentiful ale imbibed by Evan and Raikes on an empty stomach, and the arrival of a group of insolent young cricketers (among them Harry Jocelyn, Rose's brother and his friend Laxley, heir to an earldom) lead to a situation in which Evan celebrates "his most signal triumph over snobbery" (Beach). Raikes feels called upon to make a speech, but the ale he has consumed deprives him of his usual command of a crude kind of wit and leaves nothing apparent but his pretentious vulgarity. His harping on the word "gentleman" arouses the ridicule of the lordly young cricketers, and rasps on the nerves of Evan, whose motto is for the time a defiant "nothing assume". "The more ale he drank the fiercer rebel he grew against conventional ideas of rank, and those class-barriers which we scorn so vehemently when we find ourselves kicking at them" (p. 119). A quarrel arises, and ends in a challenge to fight. Evan, who has loyally taken the part of his friend in spite of his distaste for his manners, is 138

challenged too and is perfectly willing to fight, but his sensitivity, exasperated by Raikes' assumption and the disdainful air of the young men, forbids him to do it under false pretences. There was a disdainful smile on Evan's mouth, as he replied: " I must first enlighten you. I have no pretensions to your blue blood, or yellow. If, sir, you will deign to challenge a man who is n o t the son of a gentleman, and consider the expression of his thorough contempt for your conduct sufficient to enable you to overlook that fact, you may dispose of ine. My friend here has, it seems, reason to be proud of his connections. That you may not subsequently bring the charge against me of having led you to 'soil your hands' — as your friend there terms it — I, with all the willingness in the world to chastise you or him for your impertinence, must first give you a fair chance of escape, by telling you that my father was a tailor, (and that I also am a t a i l o r ) 1 0 2 . " (Ch. 12, p. 123.)

This is very noble and spirited, but in the depressing soberness of the next morning Evan loses something of his exaltation. Common sense tells him that he could have retained his self-respect even without such sensational self-disclosure — "Where was the necessity for him to thrust the fact of his being that abhorred social pariah down the throats of an assembly of worthy good fellows?" (p. 124). He realizes how much the ale he had drunk had to do with the courage that he had felt so proud of, and that if he had really achieved the sovereign indifference to Tailordom that he longed for he would not have felt the necessity for such theatrical effects. It is here that Meredith reveals that the test his hero has to undergo is much more than the mere question of whether he has the courage to acknowledge his social position. That is fairly easy, he implies, when defiance is aroused by favourable circumstances. Much more difficult is the achievement of a genuine sense of proportion, a serene inner indifference about social disadvantages. Meredith does not say this in so many words, but it comes out clearly from his method of playing the light of mockery on his hero whenever he slips into any defiant posing. When, a victim to the Countess's arts, Evan permits himself to be carried off to Beckley Court, he becomes involved in so many conflicting influences that for a time he loses all control over his fate. Played on skilfully by his sister he lets himself gradually slip into situations where his sense of honour tells him he is little better than an impostor, but where turning back is almost more than can be demanded of a youth not superhuman. Circumstances conspire to deprive him of even the feeble excuse that it was the Countess and not he himself who was actively practicing deceit; in the course of a quarrel with Laxley Evan formally declares himself qualified to fight him, and in this chapter, headed "Evan calls himself a gentleman", we have the point at which he is conscious of being the farthest from the real thing. This is the anti-climax to the factitious climax at the inn. 102 The phrase in brackets was omitted in the final edition of the book, in which many cuts were made, especially in the part of John Raikes. Meredith neglected, however, to revise certain other passages at later points, where Evan is reported as having referred to himself as not only a son of a tailor but as the thing itself, (cf. p. 128.)

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When things have reached this point Evan sees very clearly that the only dignified and honourable thing for him to do is to leave Beckley Court, but the pleadings of his sister are strongly reinforced by the attraction Rose has for him, as well as by his demon pride, which, pricked by the persecutions of Laxley, persuades him that he must stick it out and prove himself a better gentleman than this arrogant adolescent. He has moments of inner triumph, as when he brings himself to make a graceful and good-humoured apology for some harsh expressions: "he towered in his conceit considerably above these aristocratic boors, who were speechless and graceless, but tigers for their privileges and advantages" (p. 198). In the course of time he is given many opportunities to prove his courage and chivalry and succeeds in convincing everyone of his being a gentleman except Laxley, whose "retention of ideas once formed befitted his rank and station" (p. 164). These outward tests are, however, satisfying neither to the hero himself nor to Meredith, his merciless anatomizer. But in his inner development, too, we are permitted to see some progress. In the first place, he begins to know himself: Evan . . . had begun to talk with his own nature and though he knew not yet how it would stretch or contract, he knew that he was weak and could not perform moral wonders without severe struggles. The cynic may add, if he likes — or without potent liquors. (Ch. 33, p. 358.)

And a little later he shows signs of possessing what to Meredith was the primary condition for the acquisition of a well-balanced attitude towards life: a sense of humour about himself: (Evan, who, thanks to his father, is an excellent swordsman, is revelling in the thought of having a duel with Ferdinand Laxley.) Face to face with his adversary —• what then were birth or position? . . . A glow of bitter pleasure exalted him when, after hot passages, and parryings and thrusts, he had disarmed Ferdinand Laxley, and bestowing on him his life, said: "Accept this worthy gift of the son of a tailor!" and he wiped his sword, haply bound up his wrist, and stalked off the ground, the vindicator of man's natural dignity. And then he turned upon himself with laughter, discovering a most wholesome power, barely to be suspected in him yet; but of all the children of glittering Mel and his solid mate, Evan was the best mixed compound of his parents. (Ch. 36, p. 377.)

Evan's laughter does not, like Shibli Bagarag's, miraculously free him from all the difficulties surrounding him, but it represents a step in self-knowledge even more valuable, in that he has seen that one can be ridiculous not only in assuming more of the world's grandeur than is one's due but also in posing as the heroic "vindicator of man's natural dignity". Lest Meredith be suspected of indirectly defending his own weakness in not confessing to the tailor in his own family, it must be noted that he makes it perfectly clear that honesty on this point is demanded of his hero. And when the issue really becomes acute, when Evan finally learns that Rose will be his, he brushes aside the countess's protests, and makes 140

a f u l l confession. His ordeal is not finished even then, however. T h e countess's baseness in writing an anonymous letter t h a t brings disaster on one of t h e m i n o r characters in t h e story forces Evan, just w h e n Rose has been successful in bullying h e r family into consent to h e r marriage, to t a k e t h e b l a m e on himself and t h u s to destroy his happiness just as h e h a d it in his h a n d . At this seeming baseness even Rose begins to doubt " w h e t h e r it really was in Nature's power, u n a i d e d by family-portraits, coats-of-arms, ball-room practice, and at least one small p h i a l of Essence of Society, to m a k e a G e n t l e m a n " (p. 439). A f t e r this "pagan sacrifice", Evan actually enters training as a tailor. B u t his decision is made this time without any false heroics. H e "keeps bright t h e l a m p of self-respect", b u t asks for n e i t h e r pity n o r admiration. I n t h e end, of course, Rose learns that h e was innocent of t h e crime h e h a d accused himself of, and t h e story could have really ended without f u r t h e r complications. But M e r e d i t h seems driven to p u t his young tailor to every extremity of demonstration t h a t h e is at soul a gentleman, even a f t e r t h e reader and everyone who counts in t h e story have long been more t h a n persuaded of it — this is t h e weakness of t h e end of t h e novel, and is p e r h a p s a betrayal t h a t t h e extreme objectivity and ironic detachedness M e r e d i t h shows in this book are not quite genuine. T h e last episode, Evan's inheritance of Beckley Court f r o m t h e little J u l i a n a Bonner who was in love with h i m and his noble generosity in bestowing it on the Jocelyns, smacks a t r i f l e of t h e kind of gesture Evan h a d laughed at himself f o r dreaming of. T h e rest of t h e characters in t h e novel serve to give a cross section t h r o u g h t h e snobocracy. T h e m i n o r characters assembled at Beckley Court serve as a chorus expressing t h e conventional views of the world. T h e y accept t h e Countess at first on t h e basis of her title, b u t t u r n against her mercilessly when t h e t r u t h is known. "How clearly Mrs. Shorne and Mrs. Melville saw h e r vulgarity n o w ! By the new light of knowledge, how certain they were t h a t they h a d seen h e r ungentle training in a dozen little instances" (p. 324). F e r d i n a n d Laxley is t h e young aristocrat of little wit who accepts t h e prejudices of his class without t h e quiver of a doubt. Rose, in h e r h u m i l i a t i o n at having, as she thinks, been deceived in Evan, envies Laxley's blind belief in t h e superiority given by his position. " I n t r u t h she sighed to feel as h e did, above everybody! — she t h a t h a d fallen so l o w ! Above everybody! — born above t h e m , and t h e r e f o r e superior by grace divine! To this Rose Jocelyn h a d come — she envied t h e m i n d of F e r d i n a n d " (p. 432). Rose herself is like Evan a representative of the average young English person of the t i m e — she has t h e rudiments of snobbery that, as Thackeray believed, only t h e p h i l o s o p h e r could avoid having but shows herself capable of gallantly overriding t h e m when h e r h e a r t speaks. Raikes, who supplies t h e farce of t h e story, is t h e incarnation of t h e f r a n k l y b u m p t i o u s young upstart. H e has n e i t h e r t h e Countess's affinity for the superficial refinement of good society nor 141

Evan's sense for the subtleties of the gentlemanly code of honour and conduct. I n his consent to wear the tin plate inscribed " J o h n F . Raikes, G e n t l e m a n 1 0 3 " and in his grotesque ambition to marry a noblewoman, E v a n sees something like a caricature of himself and of his own ambitions and is thus helped, by cruel self-mockery, to realize that his position at Beckley Court is intolerable. T o m a k e his picture complete Meredith includes one winning portrait of a non-snob — L a d y Jocelyn, and one very amusing sketch of the antisnob, in T o m Cogglesby. Old T o m is the son of a cobbler, who has amassed a huge fortune and whose chief f e a r in l i f e is that some one might think h i m a s h a m e d of his origins. We are given a hint that his rampant republicanism h a d its source in the great disappointment of his youth, his lack of success in wooing the beautiful Miss B o n n e r ( L a d y Jocelyn), which he erroneously attributed to the young lady's social prejudice. His arrival at Beckley Court in a donkey-cart is typical of the man's character. H i s brother Andrew tells h i m that he " i s a deuced deal prouder than fifty p e e r s " and calls him an "upside-down old d e s p o t " (p. 425). His interview with L a d y Jocelyn, when he offers to bestow a fortune on Evan if R o s e will marry the tailor's son, is a h i g h point in the comedy. L a d y Jocelyn absent-mindedly makes a remark in French, and Old T o m , who could f a c e peers and princes without being disconcerted but is always m a d e u n h a p p y by a L a t i n or foreign phrase, mutters, "Cobbler's sons ain't scholars, my l a d y " . " A n d are not all in the h a b i t of throwing their father in our teeth, I h o p e ! " , is the lady's calm rebuke. With all his gruffness, he is a likable character and Meredith does not conceal his sympathy for him, although he chastises him with the darts of the comic spirit. In T o m , as in E v a n at his defiant periods, Meredith is doubtless mocking at certain impulses he h a d felt in his own nature. L a d y Jocelyn is without doubt the most humanly a d m i r a b l e character She is a blue-stocking, compared to the worldly in Evan Harrington. ladies surrounding her, but without a touch of pedantry. S h e is the ironic observer of the comedy, fully enjoying the foibles of her own class as well as the follies of the tailor's family. While the other ladies indulged in rather undignified indignation at the Countess's presumption, L a d y Jocelyn, who h a d a keener eye than anyone else f o r the essential vulgarity of the woman, sat back as at a play and enjoyed her, with a certain admiration f o r the rhetorical talents of this " f e m a l e e u p h u i s t " and for the undeniable grace with which she m a d e herself ridiculous: "She seems to have stepped out of a book of French memoirs", said her ladyship. " L a vie galante et dévote — voilá la Comtesse." In contradistinction to the other ladies, she did not detest the Countess because she could not like her. (Ch. 24, p. 248.) 103 TJjis explanation of Raikes' uneasiness at the picnic, only hinted at in the final edition, is made much more intelligible in the original form. Vide Beach, p. 74.

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A n d at the dinner at which the great Mel was so unwillingly digested by his daughters L a d y Jocelyn took u p a spirited if ironic defense of the upstart. "What I like in this Mel is, that though he was a snob, and an impostor, he could still make himself respected by his betters. He was honest, so f a r ; he acknowledged his tastes, which were those of Frank, Melville, Seymour and George — the tastes of a gentleman. I prefer him infinitely to your cowardly democrat, who barks for what he can't get, and i9 generally beastly." (Ch. 22, p. 229.)

Her attitude toward questions of rank is one of f r a n k realism. Although she puts no obstacles in Rose's way, she does not conceal the fact that, the world being what it is, she would have preferred her setting her heart on a young m a n whose ancestors were m o r e presentable. I n her conversation with Old T o m her attitude is defined clearly. "I'm afraid I have no Republican virtues . . . Don't be angry with me," for Old Tom looked sour again; " I like birth and position, and worldly advantages, and, notwithstanding Rose's pledge of the instrument she calls her heart, and in spite of your offer, I shall, I tell you honestly, counsel her to have nothing to do with — " — "Anything less than lords", Old Tom struck in. "Very well. Are you going to lock her up, my l a d y ? " — "No. Nor shall I whip her with rods . . . She will have my advice. And I shall take care that before she makes a step she shall know exactly what it leads to . . . I confess I like this Mr. Harrington. But it's a great misfortune for him to have had a notorious father. A tailor should certainly avoid fame, and this young man will have to carry his father on his back. He'll never throw the great Mel off." (Ch. 28, p. 295).

If the note of worldly wisdom is somewhat emphasized here, it is as a conscious counteractive to Old Tom's bullying " r e p u b l i c a n i s m " . In the encounters with her conservative relatives she reveals herself as basically unconventional. T o her husband, who "likes b l o o d " , and exclaims, "Anything but a tailor", she points out that " h i s favourite F r e n c h m a n " , Beranger, was the grandson of a tailor, and was not a s h a m e d to speak of his " p a u v r e et h u m b l e grandpere". (It is no reflection on Meredith if we suspect that it was just a trifle comforting f o r him to think of this shadow of Demogorgon resting on the ancestry of a noted F r e n c h m a n ; Evan Harrington gives us sufficient grounds for believing that, if it was, he was also c a p a b l e of laughing at himself for the f a c t that it was.) She too likes " b l o o d " , but is less likely to confuse eugenics with heraldry than her husband. When the Countess displays her real courage and common sense by dealing with the m a d m a n at the picnic, she arouses the admiration of L a d y Jocelyn f o r a f a m i l y so variously endowed, and is serving Evan's interests better than by nine-tenths of h e r intrigue. "Upon my honour," said Lady Jocelyn, "they are a remarkable family," meaning the Harringtons. What farther she thought she did not say, but she was a woman who looked to natural gifts more than the gifts of accident; and Evan's chance stood high with her then. (Ch. 31, p. 339.)

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The only other character in the book who shares to some extent Lady Jocelyn's immunity from snobbery is the modest figure of Andrew Cogglesby, the brewer husband of Harriet. His role in the story is not prominent, but he steers an admirable middle course between his wife's social ambition and his brother's defiant plebeianism. He is an honest democrat, and is made intensely uncomfortable by his sister-in-law's pretensions. " I thank God I'm a Radical, Van; one man's the same as another to me, how he's born, as long as he's honest and agreeable" (p. 257). And yet he is able to sympathize with Evan's distaste for the profession of tailoring and takes, in a conversation with his crotchety brother, a common sense attitude about the advantage of good society that is a counterpart of Lady Jocelyn's. " E v a n has always been used to good society; well, we mustn't sneer at it: good society's better than bad, you'll allow . . . He has good manners: well, Tom, you know you like them as well as anybody." (p. 80.)

As we glance back over the many characters in Meredith's Book of Snobs, we notice that he has distributed the roles fairly impartially between the upper social level of his story and the lower. At first sight the latter class seems to have been more generously represented than the other, but that is because a figure like the Countess de Saldar is so conspicuous that the others fade into insignifiance. The Countess, as the extreme of the upward-striving kind of snobbery, is balanced by Ferdinand (later Lord) Laxley, the extreme of the aristocratic exclusive kind. Evan and Rose are in their respective groups the different versions of young people not snobs by nature but somewhat infected by the general atmosphere. And the chorus of the minor characters at Beckley Court is echoed by their counterparts in humbler surroundings, the Lymport tradesmen and their wives who join to do honour to the man who was "above buttons". We have seen that the gracious non-snob of the upper circle, Lady Jocelyn, had her modest counterpart in brewer Andrew. Only the rabid antisnob, Old Tom, is left without a partner. We have to wait for later books of Meredith to find the aristocratic antisnob — perhaps best represented in Lord Fleetwood, with his affectation of ignoring rank and his selfdeceiving belief in his freedom from the faults of his class. Probably Meredith had not yet met the type, which was doubtless much more of a rarity in his day than now. A broad canvas of snobbery, then, we have — in all classes, and in most of its forms of manifestation. But the general conclusions to be drawn about the state of society in which such things flourish are left more or less to the reader's discretion. In the individuals presented the sin against the Comic Spirit is sufficiently clearly brought out, but we are left asking just what Meredith's attitude was toward the social problem behind the individuals. We have to wait for a much later novel to find a direct formulation of Meredith's judgment of the worship of rank in its general implications. He there speaks of "objects elevated by a decayed world" 144

and says that a nation bowing to "titles which do not distinguish practical offices" has "gone to pith 1 0 *". The irony of Meredith's fable of the lad who "would be a gentleman", and thereby the main implication of his criticism of the standards of English society, is that at the very points where Evan shows himself really a gentleman he is working against the probability of his being ever recognized as one by the world, and that in the final analysis he owes his success to the Countess's dubious intrigues, which his gentlemanly instincts caused him to disapprove, and from which he should, if he had been sternly consistent, have refused to profit at the very beginning. For in spite of the fact that the Countess had things taken out of her hands at the end, she had by her preliminary efforts created the situation which alone made it possible for Evan to gain a footing where his real qualities could make themselves felt. Rose would never have had the chance to fall in love with him "if the Countess had not woven the tangle, and gained Evan time". Meredith has words of excuse, almost of defence, for the upstart snob. Lady Jocelyn's defence of the Great Mel is echoed by a plea for tolerance for the Countess. Her critics "could certainly say that the Countess was egregiously affected and vulgar; but who could be altogether complacent and sincere that had to fight so hard a fight?" (p. 350). The successful upstart deserves his success, in Meredith's opinion. In this struggle with society I see one of the instances where success is entirely to be honoured and remains a proof of merit. For however boldly antagonism may storm the ranks of society, it will certainly be repelled, whereas affinity cannot be resisted; and they who, against obstacles of birth, claim and keep their position among the educated and refined, have that affinity. (Ch. 32, p. 350.)

This cannot be intended to mean that the urge to enter society is only to be found among those who possess this affinity, for the case of John Raikes proves the contrary. It can also be intended to apply only to the success in m a i n t a i n i n g a place in society, not success in actively gaining it, since otherwise this remark would be in contradiction to the ironic lesson taught by the story of Evan's career. If the Countess had not made a breach of the rules of good-breeding by pushing herself into circles where she was not desired and by concealing her origins, or if Evan had followed his first honourable impulse to tell Rose the truth before he had her love on his side, there would never have been an opportunity for him to demonstrate his affinity to refined society. Meredith's excuses for the upstart are at bottom based on the same idea as guided Thackeray in the Book of Snobs. Everyone was ready to cast a stone at the "snob" as then conceived. The satirist was wasting his time if he confined himself to ridiculing this kind of snobbery. To reach the roots of the matter he must show the guardians of good society that 104

Amazing Marriage,

p. 343.

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it is the fault of their own ambiguous conception of "gentility" that forces those not in society to have recourse to intrigue and imposture to claim a share in the society that by their natural gifts they may be suited to enter. If the members of good society cannot recognize good breeding when they see it in the son of a tradesman, they are inviting h i m to take cruder means of convincing them. Meredith, like Thackeray, draws the contemporary conception of the "snob" only to point from it to snobbery in the modern sense. He does not, like Thackeray, actually give the two things the same name, but he makes the lesson equally clear, and the parallel is expressly drawn in the dinner-table conversation about the great Mel. "I think one learns more from the mock magnifico than from anything else," observed his Grace. "When the lion saw the donkey in his own royal skin," said Aunt Bel, "add the rhyme at your discretion — he was a wiser lion, that's all." (Ch. 22, p. 232.)

A realistic approach to the subject: The House on the

Beach.

I n the "House on the Beach", which was begun immediately after Evan Harrington 1 0 5 , although not published until 1877, Meredith gives a study of snobbery in its least pleasant forms, but oddly enough accompanies it with a discussion of English snobbery in general that may be taken as a defense of certain aspects of it. Mark Tinman, the hero of the tale, is a figure offering practically nothing to arouse the sympathies of the reader. He is an incarnation of social ambition, without the talent of the Harrington sisters and without their affinity for refined society. In this he resembles Jack Raikes, but he is totally lacking in the good humour that redeemed Jack's faults. The atmosphere of the story reminds one of that in Thackeray's earlier works, with their dwelling on the sordidly ridiculous. That Meredith was conscious of the depressing character of the atmosphere is shown by his entitling the story "A Realistic Tale"; "realism" was for Meredith the designation of the literary genre, now usually called naturalism, dealing by preference in the "dirty-drab" of life; as one-sided, in his opinion, as the sentimentalists' dream of a world all "rose-pink 1 0 6 ". The House on the Beach is comic, but its comedy leaves a slightly bitter taste. The contradictory nature of Mark Tinman, retired shop-keeper and bailiff of Crikswich, is symbolized in his Court suit and in his wine. The former, in all its glory of silken small-clothes, had been purchased when Tinman, "bursting to do like the rest of his countrymen, and rise above them to shake them class by class as the dust from his heels" (p. 71), had 305

See letter to Mrs. Ross, May 17, 1861 (Galland, p. 233). See Diana, Ch. 1, p. 13 f. — For Meredith's half-apology for the "realism" in the "House on the Beach" see Ch. 10, p. 129. 106

146

conceived the idea of crowning his ascent from the shop to the rank of "esquire" and to the chief distinction in the town, by entering personally into the presence of Majesty on the pretext of submitting the town's congratulations upon the betrothal of a princess. The suit becomes an obsession with him. He rehearses in it before his sister for hours at a time, practising his speech, and even after the great event is past is sometimes caught sight of by the townspeople posing in it. It becomes his refuge from the dulness of his life, under which he groans without knowing it for dulness. The wine, on the other hand, is the symbol of what has brought him the possibility of his high-flung ambitions, but at the same time represents the greatest hindrance to their realization — his economy, not to say stinginess. For the wine is sour and of an inferior vintage. The virtue of economy that has permitted him to retire at forty and nurse the ambition of marrying a "born lady" makes him balk at the idea of buying drinkable wine at a fair price and causes black rumours to circulate about dire headaches inevitably following on his dinners. Meredith dignifies the deadly liquid by taking it as the concrete symbol of an Aristotelian "tragic flaw". "Readers deep in Greek dramatic writings will see the fatal Sisters behind the chair of a man who gives frequent and bigger dinners, that he may become important in his neighbourhood, while decreasing the price he pays for his wine, that he may miserably indemnify himself for the outlay" (p. 71). If Tinman is thus exposed as deficient in the open-handed virtues of the popular notion of the gentleman, contrary in this to the great Mel and to Richmond Roy, whose ambitions he shares, we soon discover that he is still less endowed with the moral qualities distinctive of the true gentleman as conceived by Meredith. When his old friend, Van Diemen Smith, returns from Australia, full of honest pleasure at the thought of greeting a comrade from earlier days, Tinman is extremely cool. He hardly conceals his panic anxiety that the man may want to borrow money from him, until his discovery that Van Diemen is rich sets him scheming to marry his pretty daughter. To gain his ends he goes so far as to threaten disclosure of a compromising secret that would mean Van Diemen's disgrace. Van Diemen, who, in spite of his disgust at his friend's petty ambitions, has a touching faith in him that verges on gullibility, refuses to believe him in earnest, until the grotesque scene with which the story closes reveals the full extent both of Tinman's ludicrous vanity and his personal baseness. A great storm threatens Tinman's home, the House on the Beach, and Tinman, partly held back by anxiety about his uninsured belongings and partly engrossed by the charm of posing before the mirror in his Court suit, remains in the house until the rising water makes his escape almost impossible. The good Van Diemen makes every effort to save his friend, and it is when Tinman is brought safe to land that the strange nature of the man is revealed in all its contradictoriness. A gust 147

of wind blows his dressing-gown over his head and discloses to the assembled townspeople the brilliant Court suit, and a few moments later a little servant-girl brings up to him the one thing she had saved from the wrecked house: a letter addressed to the Horse Guards, a glimpse of which suffices to reveal to Van Diemen that his friend had been on the point of betraying him. This is the poor-spirited, sneaking soul who follows upon the brilliant Countess de Saldar in Meredith's gallery of portraits of the "mounting" snob. The contrast is striking. Equally noticeable is the contrast between Meredith's minute portrayal of all the unsympathetic traits in Tinman's character •— his abject stinginess, his contemptibly crafty dealings with the little serving-maid, his total lack of the instincts, not merely of a gentleman, but even of a tolerably good-hearted human being — and the remarks strewn at intervals in the story that make a plea for a somewhat indulgent judgment of the man. The young journalist Herbert Fellingham, the person who sees most clearly the ludicrous meanness of Tinman's pretensions, is called to task for being too unyielding in his indignant contempt. "Herbert's contempt for Tinman was intense; it was that of the young and ignorant who live in their imaginations like spendthrifts, unaware of the importance of them as the food of life, and of how necessary it is to seize upon the solider one among them for perpetual sustenance when the unsubstantial are vanishing" (p. 136). In the folly which made of a thoroughly unlikable character a ridiculous one into the bargain, Meredith thus looks deep enough to see a spark of the redeeming quality of imagination. His description of Tinman gazing at his court suit, and finally slipping into it, as the storm battered his house, brings a repetition of this idea: Probably it wa6 a work of inpratiation and degrees; a feeling of the silk, a trying on to one leg, then a matching of the fellow with it. O you Revolutionists! who would have no state, no ceremonial, and but one order of galligaskins! This man must have been wooed away in spirit to forgetfulness of the tempest scourging his mighty neighbour to a bigger and farther leap; he must have obtained from the contemplation of himself in his suit that which would be the saving of all men, in especial of his countrymen — imagination, namely. (Ch. 11, p. 148.)

Thus in spite of the similarity of this portrayal of the snobbery of the "Kleinbürger" to Thackeray's earlier studies, we find Meredith much in advance of his predecessor in his eye for the complexity of the impulses giving rise to it. His attitude toward the tendency to "mount" as an English characteristic, and toward trade, is defined at the beginning of Chapter 10: The land is in a state of fermentation to mount, and the shop, which has shot half their stars to their social zenith, is what verily they would scald themselves to wash themselves free of. Nor is it in any degree a reprehensible sign that they should fly as from hue and cry the title of tradesman. It is on the contrary the spot of sanity which bids us right cordially hope. Energy, transferred to the moral sense, may clear them yet.

148

In other words, Meredith defends the negative side of snobbery, in so far as it represents a reaction against the grubby materialism of the shop-keeping spirit, without losing sight of the great pity that the positive side of the reaction should not have been directed toward worthier aims. It remains something of a mystery why Meredith should have chosen to embody these rather hopeful, even if mildly ironic, remarks about English snobbery in a story in which the dirty-drab of human nature is so predominant. The fact that seven years intervened between the story's conception and its publication suggests the possibility that Meredith's ideas had undergone a certain modification in that period and that the philosophically indulgent remarks were added as counteractives to a certain youthful harshness in the story's original form. Herbert Fellingham, Tinman's youthful rival for the affections of Van Diemen's daughter, is, as Galland remarks, not unlike the Meredith of 1861, with his liking for long walks and the sea-wind and for a well-prepared dinner, and it might well be that the author's mitigation of Fellingham's mockery of Tinman was the older Meredith's criticism of his own youthful intolerance. On the other hand, this supposition is not necessary to explain the story. It may be that Meredith purposely devoted his half-apology for snobbishness to a figure that offered no personal attractions to distract the reader from the full force of the paradox. The Harringtons, with their affinity for a higher refinement, were, with all the comic distortion the social order imposed on them, exceptional creatures, and offered for that reason less grounds for optimism. Society shall have to wait long, Meredith had said, "before another Old Mel and his progeny shall appear" (E. H., p. 350). The social dissatisfaction of a man like Tinman was, Meredith perhaps wished to say, significant as a shred of hope for England precisely because it was to be found in a man who in all other respects embodied the faults of a shop-keeping s o u l . Meredith shows in this story his capacity for attacking an unhealthy excrescence of civilization with all the force of ridicule at his command, and yet without losing sight of the mysterious connections it may have with tendencies that are healthy and necessary in themselves. It is the same method he applies later to "sentimentalism", which he combats as the most dangerous vice of Victorian civilization, while at the same time granting that it is merely a distorted form of tendencies that are necessary if the "natural brute" shall be civilized at all. Snobbery and sentimentality: Sandra Belloni. The comic material to be found in a family of young ladies devoured by social ambition and basing their claims to rise on the excessive refinement of their tastes was seen and utilized by Molière in the Précieuses Ridicules. In the story of the Pole sisters in Sandra Belloni Meredith offers us his Cathos and Madelon, with a third sister added for good 149

measure; he enlarges and comments upon their characters with the novelist's privilege, and demonstrates how remarkably well they fit into Victorian English society. It is quite likely that Meredith, with his great admiration for Molière, was conscious of the parallel that could be drawn between the Pole sisters and the Précieuses Ridicules. He assures us that the young ladies had more than once exclaimed of their father, the City merchant with his forgetfulness about his aitches, "How singular that we should descend from him" (p. 106), and it is hardly possible that this direct echoing of Madelon's remark about the good Gorgibus, following as it does upon the similar exclamation by the Countess de Saldar, could have been made without any thought of Molière. And in the Essay on Comedy Meredith himself traces from Molière the literary ancestry of all the "ladies that soar in the realms of rose-pink 1 0 7 " — rose-pink being for him the symbolic colour for the sentimentalism in which the Pole sisters are his first study. Meredith introduces the sisters to us in the first paragraph of the book as ladies who "were scaling society by the help of the Arts". They themselves called the process "mounting". Motherless daughters of a rich and indulgent father, who nursed the dream of finding aristocratic husbands for his daughters, they shared their father's ambition but expressed it in more idealized terms. "To be brief, they were very ambitious damsels, aiming at they knew not exactly what, save that it was something so wide that it had not a name, and so high in the air that no one could see it" (p. 4). Theirs is one of the higher varieties of snobbery, and the irony and psychological analysis here are on a higher plane than in the study of the Harrington sisters, the resemblance of whose position and ambitions to those of the Pole sisters has often been remarked upon by Meredith's critics. The dividing line between the Poles' social ambition per se and what Meredith calls their "sentimentality" is indistinct. It may be seen that they were sentimentalists. That is to say, they supposed that they enjoyed exclusive possession of the Nice Feelings, and exclusively comprehended the Fine Shades. Whereof more will be s a i d ; but in the meantime- it will explain their propensity to mount; it will account for their irritation at the material obstructions surrounding them; and possibly the philosopher will now have his eye on the source of that extraordinary sense of superiority to mankind which was the crown of their complacent brows. Eclipsed as they may be in the gross appreciation of the world by other people, . . . persons that nourish Nice Feelings and are intimate with the Fine Shades carry their own test of intrinsic value. (p. 5.)

This pride in the delicacy of their perceptions sometimes even leads them to feel a certain superiority to the aristocratic models they have set up for their guidance in assembling a "circle" that will be worthy of them. We are told that "the ladies could turn upon aristocracy too, when it suited them" (p. 22), and their admiration for Lady Gosstre, the ideal hostess in their eyes, is tempered by a slight scorn for her deficiencies in artistic perception. 107

150

Essay on Comedy,

p. 112.

They could bow to her with the nursed of overtopping her still possessed: a casket little people to open for them, if they would contain.

greater humility, owing to the secret sense they in that ineffable something which they alone will be wise in not hurrying our Father Time continue to enjoy the jewel they suppose it to (p. 28.)

Their allegiance to the Fine Shades is, however, something more than the recourse taken by their resentment at the social handicaps they suffer under as daughters of the City. Theirs is not the hypocritical intellectuality of a Mrs. Newcome, growing merely out of baffled social ambition. They take their Fine Shades seriously even if they confuse them with exteriors. On the other hand, their lion-hunting lacks a basis in real artistic comprehension such as redeems the salon of a Madame Verdurin. Their appreciation of Emilia's genius is highly superficial and their enthusiasm for the young poet, Tracy Runningbrooke (a portrait of Swinburne), is distinctly bolstered up by the knowledge that he is "of the blood of dukes". A certain deficiency in the nature itself of their ideals, rather than any lack of sincerity in their allegiance to them, leads to their continual confusion of them with superficialities. Their admiration for Emilia's voice suffers a diminution when she appears with a boot-lace untied and persists in discussing the nourishing properties of potatoes, while thenappreciation of the penniless organist's gentlemanly manners only approaches real respect when he appears in correct evening clothes at dinner. The touchstone that reveals the shallowness of the ideals of the sentimentalists in this story is found in the figure of Emilia (Sandra). She is one of the "children of nature" that Meredith liked to paint to throw into relief all that he found artificial and unhealthy in the civilization of his day. She is not as successful a creation as Carinthia in the Amazing Marriage, another child of nature in conflict with the superficialities of English civilization, but she fulfils her purpose in the story. For Meredith she embodies the capacity for real passion, "noble strength on fire", as he defines it, as opposed to the watered sentiment of the "little people" of his story. She also, by her naive innocence of all social prejudice, throws a comic light on the snobbery of the Pole sisters whom she continually horrifies. She has to be taught (like Carinthia, in a similar situation —• A. M., p. 68) that one does not apply the term "gentleman" at random (p. 41), and her insistence on keeping her promise to sing for the villagers at their club feast brings upon her the warning; "Society will never tolerate one who is familiar with boors" (p. 62). The contrast between her hierarchy of values and that of the Poles is brought out amusingly in the scene where she tells Wilfrid Pole of her pride in her father, the penniless Italian emigrant and musician: "My father is one of the most wonderful of men in the whole world!" Wilfrid lifted an eyelid.

151

" H e is one of the first-violins at the Italian o p e r a ! " T h e gallant cornet's critical appreciation of this impressive announcement was expressed in a spiral ebullition of smoke from his mouth. " H e is such a proud m a n ! And I don't wonder at that: he has reason to be proud." Again Wilfrid lifted an eyelid, and there is no knowing but that ideas of a connection with foreign Counts, Cardinals, and Princes passed hopefully through him. " W o u l d you believe that he is really the own nephew of A n d r o n i z e t t i ! " " D e u c e h e i s ! " said Wilfrid, in a mist. "Which o n e ? " "The composer!" Wilfrid emitted more smoke. (Ch. 6, p. 31.)

The chief irony in the story of the Poles consists in the fact that the two vices Meredith is ridiculing in their persons, their snobbery and their sentimentality, are. at one and the same time in conflict with each other and yet subtly dependent on each other. Snobbery in its more vulgar manifestations is the object of their horror. The dreadful Mrs. Chump is loathed because "she went on public knees to the aristocracy", and their rivals, the Tinley girls, are heartily despised for using the vast wealth of their father for "mounting" in their fashion •— a fashion, it is true, distinctly cruder than that of the Pole sisters but differing more in degree than in essence. They are continually wounded at the thought that an unperceptive world might not see the ocean separating such vulgar aims from their pursuit of an ideal. The proportion of the worldly and ideal in the aims of the sisters differs somewhat in the individual cases. Cornelia has dangerous leanings toward actually living up to her ideals at the expense of her ambition. Her demands of the matrimonial gods were high: her "heart of hearts demanded for her as spouse, a lord, a philosopher, and a Christian, in one: and he must be a member of Parliament". Fate offered her the member of Parliament, but in the person of the pedantic Sir Twickenham Pryme, while her ideal tastes were much better suited in the penniless organist, Purcell Barrett, her equal if not superior in ardent and consistent sentimentalism. In the end the sentimental wins over the worldly in her, but too late to prevent the "tragedy of sentiment", Barrett's suicide. In Adela, the younger sister, on the other hand, social ambition predominates. She sometimes oversteps the boundaries of extreme delicacy the sisters set themselves for their most secret thoughts. She is irritated by the tragic air assumed by her sister's humbler soupirant. " 'His feelings!', she cried internally; and the fact presented itself to her, that feelings were a luxury utterly unfit for poor men, who were to be accused of presumption for indulging in them" (p. 140). When Purcell Barrett inherits a baronetcy, she "felt that it was now possible that Cornelia might throw over the rich for the penniless baronet, and absolutely for an instant she thought nakedly, 'The former ought not to be lost to the f a m i l y ' " (p. 248). Their snobbery is, however, in direct conflict with their ideals only in its cruder manifestations. In general they succeed in reconciling the 152

social and the spiritual goals of their mounting. This Meredith explains as possible because the superficial culture they worship is in reality the dominant ideal of society. Sentimentalists are a perfectly natural growth of a fat soil. Wealthy communities must engender them. If with attentive minds we mark the origin of classes, we shall discern that the Nice Feelings and the Fine Shades play a principal part in our human development and social history. (Ch. 1, p. 5.)

The essential oneness of their snobbery and their sentimentality is most clearly seen in their attitude toward money. Both snobbery and sentimentality (of the special variety Meredith is dealing with) prescribe that money shall be scorned as something beneath one's notice. In the Poles this doctrine was followed with a sincerity verging on the morbid. "There were subjects they had no power to bring their minds to consider. Money was in the list" (p. 105). Their father's matrimonial designs on the rich Mrs. Chump remain an inexpressible mystery to them because they cannot bring themselves to conceive of the obvious explanation that he was in money difficulties. Adela just brushes against the thought: "Suppose that, after all, Money! . . . " Yes, Mammon has acted Hymen before now. Nothing else explained Mrs. Chump; so she thought, in one clear glimpse. Inveterate sentimental habit smeared the picture with two exclamations —• "imp o s s i b l e ! " and " P a p a ! " I desire it to be credited that these simple interjections absolutely obscured her judgement. Little people think either what they are made to think, or what they choose to think. (Ch. 16, p. 129.)

This comedy of self-deception very nearly has fatal results. Mr. Pole, who is as shy about discussing money matters as his daughters, indulges their ever-growing desires until he is on the verge of ruin and disgrace, and is only saved by Emilia's intervention with his partner, the rich melomaniac Pericles. In the end the sisters are thus saved from the poverty that would have burst their little bubble of artificial refinement, but they are forced into the "wholesale slaughter of the Fine Feelings" involved in the acceptance of Mrs. Chump in their household. Meredith does not defend the money-grubbers. In comparison to the sordid materialism of the shop-keeping mentality he prefers even the distorted idealism of his sentimentalists. But his charge against the conception of refinement represented by the Pole sisters is that their scorn of money is not consistent. Now, when one really hates gold, one is at war with one's fellows. The tide sets that way. There is no compromise: to hate it is to try to stem the flood. It happens that this is one of the temptations of the sentimentalist, who should reflect, but does not, that the fine feelers by which the iniquities of gold are so keenly discerned, are a growth due to it, nevertheless. Those 'fine feelers', or antennae of the sense, come of sweet e a s e ; that is synonymous with gold in our island-latitude. (Ch. 22, p. 173.)

An ideal of refinement that is dependent on a "certain prolonged term of comfortable feeding" (p. 5) but that despises everything that makes the "comfortable feeding" possible, is doomed irrevocably to self-contradiction. 153

Here Meredith touches on the dilemma seen by Veblen 1 0 8 in the leisure-class ideals of civilization. A civilization that worships great wealth and despises the means of acquiring it must be at odds with itself. Meredith carries the problem a step farther than Veblen, however; his "sentimentalists" are not merely concerned, consciously at any rate, with demonstrating their wealth and leisure by means of their culture, they are more or less honestly convinced both of the virtues of that culture and of the baseness of the pecuniary pillars it rests on. Grant that the cultural values thus conditioned are in themselves worthy, and the dilemma is practically insoluble. The only escape from the compromise of self-deception indulged in by the Pole sisters lies in the cynicism displayed by the more realistic members of the aristocracy in the story — the frank admission of the necessity for stooping to make terms with mammon. Wilfrid Pole, through his contact with Lady Charlotte and her circle, acquires something of this cynicism, and begins to look with less disfavour on his father's courting of Mrs. Chump when he sees how many impoverished noblemen would not hesitate to accept the lady and her fortune. He no longer shrinks from facing the fact that the Fine Feelings can only be indulged in on a firm foundation of material possessions: " I f you posture, and are poor, you provoke ridicule", he tells his sister. This realistic solution involves, to be sure, a certain sacrifice of some of the more treasured Fine Shades. Of the sentimental and the cynical solution, Meredith, with his liking for the facing of facts, would perhaps prefer the latter. But as he sees the roots of the problem, the cultural ideals basing on fat living are in themselves dubious. The positive side of his satire lies in his plea for robuster ideals that will not wither at a touch of material obstacles. His Emilia, in her devotion to music and to the cause of her beloved Italy, embodies for him the kind of practical idealism that can withstand poverty and a diet of potatoes. Meredith does not conceal that his novel was written with a serious purpose, and the lesson it embodies is this: if you are to despise mammon, you must create a culture that is not exclusively dependent on it. In Vittoria, the sequel to Sandra Belloni, (pub. 1866) Meredith abandons the realm of social satire and follows the adventurous career of Emilia in Italy. The pale tragicomedy of sentimentality gives place to the sway of real passion, to the life of action and of practical idealism. The Poles appear as shadows from another world who cross the paths of the real actors from time to time merely to bring an accent of contrast. Adela becomes slightly involved as a minor actor in some of the political adventures, and astonishes the Italian ladies by being evidently only interested in securing a footing in Italian society. The gulf between the two worlds is brought out by Emilia's bare notice of Adela's presence: 108

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Thorstein Veblen: The Theory

of the Leisure

Class, London 1924.

" S h e was little more than a shade to Vittoria ( E m i l i a ) , who wondered what she h a d to live f o r " (p. 415). T h e novel Rhoda Fleming (1865), immediately following on Sandra Belloni, opens with a situation parallel to that in Evan Harrington and in Sandra Belloni. We are introduced to another f a m i l y of young sisters who by their beauty and natural gifts seem destined to rise above their condition. B u t in the story of R h o d a and D a h l i a F l e m i n g Meredith is concerned no longer with the comic possibilities of the situation but with the age-old tragedy of the young girl dazzled by the great world and thereby at the mercy of the seducer and deceiver. T h e tragedy of snobbery, after the c o m e d y ? T h i s simple f o r m u l a is hardly a d e q u a t e f o r the story of the F l e m i n g sisters. T h e m a i n issue is not really snobbery here. T h a t the two country girls should dream of the city, and of the Prince Florizels who were to come and rescue them f r o m the rustic crudity of their surroundings, was only too natural and was the result m o r e of a thirst for pleasure and adventure than of social vanity. Likewise in the case of E d w a r d Blancove, Dahlia's betrayer, the explanation of his actions is not merely the indifference of the baronet's son to the feelings of a h u m b l e village girl, but lies deeper, in the mixture of egoism and weakness m a k i n g u p his character. In certain of the minor characters, however, Meredith returns to some of the themes we have found in his previous work. I n M a j o r Waring h e has attempted another portrait of the non-snob. Waring is an officer, an accepted gentleman, who is really c a p a b l e of an uncondescending friendship with a young f a r m e r . T h e r e is something to modern ears a trifle displeasing in the accent of astonishment given to the fact that a m a n of intelligence should choose his friends where he pleases. It is of course a comment on his contemporaries and not on Meredith that it p r o b a b l y was indeed a very unusual situation, but there is a certain heavy-handedness in his treatment of it that is rare in Meredith, to whom heavy-handedness was the u n p a r d o n a b l e sin. If the comic spirit faltered a little here, compensation is m a d e in the amusing figure of Algy Blancove, the fool of the comedy. His naive snobbery is in comic contrast to his idée fixe of escaping all his pecuniary embroilments by emigrating to colonial wilds and a l i f e of primitive simplicity; for example, when his extreme discomfort in a second-class carriage brings all sorts of anti-democratic ideas to a boil in his h e a d just while he is in active pursuit of the farmer's daughter whom he hopes to m a k e his cheese-and-butter-making mate in the wilds. Snobbery treated lightly:

The Case of General

Ople and Lady

Camper

(1869)109.

Rhoda Fleming and Vittoria represent something of a break in Meredith's preoccupation with snobbery as a m a i n theme f o r his novels. B u t 108

Date of atory'6 conception (Galland, p. 392); published in 1877.

155

before he turned definitely to other themes he was to write a short story and a novel which in their very different ways are masterpieces on the subject. T h e Case of General Ople is a very brief story and was apparently written in a light mood, but is hardly to be equalled in Meredith f o r its utterly good-humoured comedy. T h e good general's m i l d and a m i a b l e snobbery, his p r i d e in the "gentlemanly residence" of diminutive proportions in which h e lives on his half-pay as a retired soldier, his honest respect for the aristocracy as embodied in his eccentric neighbour, L a d y Camper, are in themselves distinctly harmless foibles. Where he becomes f a i r prey f o r ridicule, e m b o d i e d in this case in the ruthless caricatures of himself with which he is overwhelmed by the acid L a d y Camper, is in his letting his vanity blind h i m to the predicament of his daughter, who is eating her heart out for L a d y Camper's nephew. With all his l i k a b l e qualities, then, the General is not free of Meredith's trio of sins: snobbery, sentimentality and egoism. H e shares with the P o l e f a m i l y an inability to b e f r a n k about money matters, and L a d y C a m p e r begins her ingenious persecutions by slyly pushing h i m into expenditures that are much beyond his means, although he would perish rather than admit it. When he finally goes so f a r as to mistake her interest in the romance of the young people for matrimonial intentions towards himself, she asks him openly about his income, but Can only get f r o m h i m the vague assurance t h a t it is sufficient to k e e p u p a "gentlemanly a p p e a r a n c e " . S h e pushes h i m into a corner by m a k i n g her acceptance of h i m conditional upon his giving his daughter a dowry of ten thousand pounds. H e actually prefers a rather ungallant withdrawal f r o m his pretensions to her h a n d to m a k i n g a f r a n k statement about the amount of his income. It is then that L a d y Camper's caustic wit gets the better of her and she pours ridicule on his h a n d s o m e white h e a d until she cures h i m of the last shreds of selfishness and vanity, and incidentally hits so h a r d that she is softened to the point of accepting t h e m a n who could after all take his punishment with a certain winning good grace. T h e story of General Ople adds nothing especially new to Meredith's studies of snobbery, but by its easy good h u m o u r it is evidence that Meredith h a d by this time conquered his personal self-consciousness about the subject sufficiently to take it really lightly when he wished. T h e Snob Magnificent:

Harry

Richmond.

Meredith's last extended study of snobbery is a full-length portrait of an inspired upstart such as he h a d briefly sketched in the legendary figure of t h e Great Mel. T h e story of Richmond Roy and his son H a r r y is a parallel in m a n y ways to the story of the Countess de Saldar and E v a n Harrington. I n both novels a young boy, endowed with the susceptibility to social vanity that Meredith apparently considers innate in the young of the h u m a n species, is whirled partly against his will into a comedy of 156

aristocratic pretensions by an older person in whom social ambition has reached the proportions of a mania. A n d in both cases we are torn between sympathy for the young man struggling to free himself from an unsound influence and an irresistible admiration for the virtuosity of a talented upstart. Richmond Roy is a more winning figure than the Countess de Saldar and is drawn by Meredith with less emphasis on the purely comic. His pretensions and adventures are more fantastic than those of the daughter of the shears, but he becomes, through the verve with which Meredith draws his astounding personality, a more living and credible figure than she is. T h e explanation for the man's astonishing career is to be found in his unique personal power of fascination. He made of Harry's childhood a f a n c i f u l paradise by his tales of heroes and- his inspired improvisations on themes from Shakespeare, and caused him to forget completely the comfortable home with his grandfather from which he had been kidnapped. T h e child's ardent devotion was, however, no greater than that of the Squire's daughters, Harry's mother and his A u n t Dorothy, nor of the great ladies who became his patrons in his brilliant meteor-flights at B a t h and in London. A consummate actor, Roy was irresistible as long as he had the money to provide the setting for his campaigns in society. There is much of the dandy in him, as well as of the adventurer and the snob. A t Bath, where his ambition is to revive the ancient glories of the place that had once set the fashion to the kingdom, he succeeds, in the teeth of violent opposition, in achieving the position of an arbiter of fashion a la Brummell, and is thus a precursor of B e a u Beamish in Meredith's short story Chloe (a figure apparently modelled on the famous B e a u Nash). A l l of his tight-rope dancing in precarious situations was done with a perfection of manner that continually won Harry over to him, even after he had become critical of his father. It took the contrast of the Princess Ottilia's noble simplicity to make Harry sensitive to the slight lack of inner dignity in the man who could so congenially play the role of court jester and favourite. W h e n he was not under the personal spell of his father he could see in him something of the "mountebank" that the downright Squire Beltham accused him of being. If Roy's personal magnetism explained his many successes, it was his romantic imagination that accounted for the course his ambition took. He is a Don Quixote in the extravagance of his capacity for magnifying the significance of his adventures, if he does not share the idealism of Cervantes' hero. It is not mere chance that Meredith, to whom the Celtic was synonymous with the imaginative, makes of his mother an Irish actress. A n d it is the authenticity of his imaginative faculty that forms the strength of his appeal to the young Harry, w h o is l e f t cool by the prosaic downrightness of the Belthorpes. T h e antithesis Roy-Belthorpe is parallel to the antithesis between the great Mel and his Saxon wife, and Harry, like Evan, has inherited something of both sides. 157

As in so many of Meredith's characters, the element of imagination has its shadow side in a faculty of self-deception that in Richmond Roy verges on the psychologically abnormal. His humiliations he could forget in a very brief space of time. Harry found that "incidents over which a day or two had rolled lost their features to him" (p. 181). On the other hand, his triumphs gradually became magnified in his memory until they bore no resemblance to the reality. His feat in posing as the statue ol' Prince Albrecht becomes more remarkable every time he repeats his account of it. At first he is proud of having sat motionless for fifteen minutes, at the second version it becomes twenty-three minutes, at the third exactly thirty-seven and a quarter, and finally he speaks of "close upon an hour — call it an hour", in perfect good faith. When chance conspires to favour him, he either persuades himself that he had foretold and arranged matters himself, or that it is one more sign of supernatural protection. For he shares with the Countess de Saldar the conviction of being led by a mysterious providence. When Harry Richmond discovers his father in Germany, Roy sees supernatural influences at work. "That you should have lit on me at the critical instant is one of those miracles which combine to produce overwhelming testimony — ay, Richie! without a doubt there is a hand directing our destiny" (p. 168). The fineness of the psychological analysis behind all the romantic exterior of this adventurous story lies in Meredith's recognition of the mental instability that is necessarily a part of a character such as Roy's. The adventurer pure and simple can, as Werfel points out, have an " u n g e b r o c h e n e Natur", whereas the typical upstart snob must, since his ambition is really at odds with his conception of a social hierarchy, have some flaw in his make-up that permits him to reconcile irreconcilables. It must in passing be noted that Richmond Roy cannot be taken as a typical upstart snob in the sense here intended if one looks on him as being really' convinced of his descent from a royal duke. In that case there would be no essential contradiction between his acceptance of the hierarchy based on birth and his own pretensions. He would of course still belong in the gallery of the snobs, since a non-snob would presumably not care so much about having his birth publicly recognized, but he would not share in the peculiar problems involved in the character of the u p s t a r t 6nob. There is, however, much to indicate that his reliance on his great birth was more a playing with possibilities than a firm conviction. His mother's letters and the rumours about his father were of course dangerous food for an imagination like his, and there is no doubt that he convinced himself that he actually believed in them. But as we have seen, he could convince himself that he believed in anything, if it suited his dreams, and there is every reason to think that his ambitions would have taken much the same form, if not perhaps such extravagant proportions, even if he had not nursed the delusion of his royal birth. For the laws of his nature, with its abnormally developed "Geltungstrieb" 158

combined with u n t a m e d imagination, were sufficient in themselves to determine his destiny. T h e p r o b l e m of honour in its superficial and in its deeper significance is an issue between father and son in this novel as between brother and sister in Evan Harrington. Not that Richmond Roy was wholly devoid of a sense of honour, like the Countess, nor a cynical j u g g l e r with the mere outward signs of it like B a r r y Lyndon. His code was quite on a level with the conventional code of gentlemen of his period and it was with sincerity that h e could boast of his tenderness of h o n o u r : I keep my honour intact, like a bottled cordial; my unfailing comfort in adversity! I hand it to you, my son, on my death-bed, and say, " Y o u have there the essence of my life. Never has it been known of me that I swallowed an insult." (Ch. 19, p. 180.)

H e would never h a v e been guilty, as the Countess was, of writing an anonymous letter of scurrilous contents, much less of letting the b l a m e be p u t on someone else, and it was thus much harder for Harry than for E v a n to come to a realization of the essential indignity of their position. B u t he was i n c a p a b l e of seeing that his intrigues to win the princess for H a r r y h a d ended by putting the high-minded unsuspecting girl into a t r a p that no m a n of honour could take advantage of. It is at this point that Harry makes the definite inner break with his father, after all his periods of alternate enchantment and disillusion. If the decision comes somewhat later in his story than E v a n Harrington's determination to free himself f r o m the nets of the Countess, the explanation is that u p to this point his father, with all his instability, h a d shown himself a m a n of honour. T h e conclusion to be drawn f r o m Meredith's studies of upstarts would seem to be that the p a t h of the upstart cannot be the path of honour. H a r r y comes to the conviction that even the sincerity of his love for the princess cannot save h i m f r o m the fatality involved in their difference in station: I was deceiving everybody, myself into the bargain, as a man must do when in chase of a woman above him in rank. The chase necessitates deceit — who knows? chicanery of a sort as well. (Ch. 30, p. 267.)

B u t if Meredith shares the world's reprehension of the upstart he does not free the world f r o m the charge of being to b l a m e for the temptation put in the upstart's way. Harry sees this truth when he tries to argue his father out of his ambitions. I tried every argument I could think of to prove to him that there was neither honour, nor dignity, nor profit in aiming at titular distinctions not forced upon us by the circumstances of our birth. He kept his position with much sly fencing, approaching shrewdness; and whatever I might say, I could not deny that a vile old knock-kneed world, tugging its forelock to the look of rank and chink of wealth, backed him, if he chose to be insensible to radical dignity. (Ch. 47, p. 453.)

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Meredith is thus at one with Thackeray in tempering his satire on the climbing snobs with the reminder that they are only possible in a snobbish world. J . W. B e a c h m a k e s the point that Harry Richmond is a study of snobbery in a m o r e unadulterated form than in Evan Harrington. This case was different from that of the Harringtons. The Richmonds were not seeking an entrance into good society. They already commanded the resources of wealth, and might enjoy all the amenities of refinement and breeding. It was a dignity without meaning they sought; the satisfaction of no human appetite but unwholesome vanity. The ambition of Richmond Roy was of the pure essence of snobbery: snobbery not in its more gross and adulterated forms, but distilled, sublimated. ( T h e Comic Spirit in Meredith, p. 80.)

On the other h a n d , if it is true that in this story we have snobbery m o r e purified of extraneous elements, it is also true that we have it in less typical f o r m s than in Evan Harrington. B e i n g less typical, the book is less effective as social satire. There are not many people who can see themselves mirrored in the figure of a m a n who lays claim to royal birth and h a s extraordinary adventures as a favourite at the courts of German princes, and the picturesqueness of Roy's adventures coupled with the attractiveness of his courage and resourcefulness win the reader's admiration at many points. T h e fact probably is that Meredith was not very m u c h interested in t h e satiric side of this book. H e h a d nearly exhausted the theme f r o m that point of view in his previous books, n o t to mention all that his predecessor Thackeray h a d done. I n Harry Richmond Meredith seems to h a v e been led more by an interest in the purely artistic possibilities of the t h e m e as well as in the problems of h u m a n psychology it brought up. H e therefore neglects to include the canvas of snobbery in all social classes that justifies for Evan Harrington the n a m e of Meredith's B o o k of Snobs. A s i d e f r o m Harry himself, who is shown "repelled and attracted mysteriously" by Ottilia's station, there are few characters in t h e novel who are drawn with any emphasis on snobbery. T h e obstacle that is in the way of Harry's marriage with the Princess is not simply the social p r e j u d i c e of other characters in the book, as in Evan Harrington, but the law of the German Diet that would prevent the Princess f r o m assuming her h i g h responsibilities as reigning sovereign if she married a commoner. T h e m o r e generalized satire in the book is chiefly incidental. T h e G e r m a n professor at t h e court of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld is m a d e the mouthpiece for severe criticism of the English aristocracy and of the people that worships i t : "Your nobles are nothing but rich men inflated with empty traditions of insufferable, because unwarrantable pride, and drawing substance from alliances with the merchant class. Are they your leaders? Do they lead you in Letters? in the Arts? ay, or in Government? No, not, I am informed, not even in military service; and there our titled witlings do manage to hold up their brainless pates. Y o u are all in one mass, struggling in the stream to get out und lie and wallow

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and belch on the banks. You work so hard that you have all but one aim, and that is fatness und ease!" . . . "They have stood for the country's liberties." "As long as it imperilled their own! . . . " "They have helped to build our Constitution." "Reverence their ancestors, then! The worse for such descendants. But you have touched the exact stamp of the English mind: — it is, to accept whatsoever is bequeathed it, without inquiry whether there is any change in the matter. Nobles in very fact you would not let them be if they could. Nobles in name, with a remote recommendation to posterity — that suits y o u ! " (Ch. 29, p. 260.)

Remaining novels: One of our Conquerors and incidental occurrences of the theme. Of Meredith's remaining novels only One of our Conquerors (1890) may be said to give the theme of snobbery a place of real prominence. It is the story of the defeat of a fine spirit in the battle with society. Nataly, sensitive, intelligent, a lady to the finger-tips, must have been very courageous once: in the strictest period of Victorian society she consented to live with Victor Radnor without being married, since the elderly woman he had married as a boy, out of ambition, was still living and refused to free him — the "withered malignance", who is seen very little in the course of the story but who takes on almost allegorical proportions, as her miraculous power of clinging to a life that is already half death gradually plunges the main actors in the story deeper and deeper into situations from which there is no escape as long as she lives. Victor, the "conqueror", a veritable genius of business enterprise, abounding in vitality, incredible of defeat, is driven, by his chafing at the inability to give his companion the place of honourable security she deserves, to force her into the very situations that most torture her sensitive spirit. Nataly and he have acquired a circle of cultivated and devoted friends and are in a position to lead a dignified and independent life, miraculously sheltered from and careless of evil tongues — but Victor is not satisfied. He must continually be making plans for conquering the strongholds of society that are as yet closed to them, in spite of sad experiences in the past. He buys a huge country estate and builds a pretentious house on it, keeping it as a great secret from Nataly, who is in despair when she learns of it. This estate of Lakelands, which becomes the concrete symbol for the unworthier side of Radnor's ambition, is a motif reminding of the "almost ducal" estate of Besworth which played such an important role in the ambitions of the Pole family in Sandra Belloni. Her love for him and her knowledge that protest will be vain cause her to try gallantly to enter into his plans for storming the defenses of their aristocratic neighbours, although her spirit shrivels at this unnecessary challenging of a hostile world and at this exposure of their vulnerable situation. Victor, too, in his lucid moments, has a certain sense of ignobleness in his aims — "Is it 161

a truth", he asks himself, "that if we are great owners of money, we are so swoln with a force not native to us, as to be precipitated into acts the downright contrary of our tastes?" (p. 162). It is not merely his wealth that drives him on, it is above all his impatience of admitting defeat, coupled with a certain thick-skinnedness that prevents him from realizing that his mania for straining their false position to the utmost is literally killing Nataly. As long as they live quietly, among their faithful friends, Nataly is all calm courage and pride, convinced that the course she has taken is right, although too fastidious mentally to become defiant, to attempt to justify herself in the eyes of the world, or to rebel against the knowledge that if the truth were known she would be an outcast. As long as all she asks of the world is non-interference, she is saved from succumbing to a sense of guiltiness that her capacity for seeing the other point of view, for arguing the world's grievance better than its own advocates, as well as a tinge of conventionality in her character remaining over from her conservative upbringing, would have made only too natural. But when she is asked to thrust herself upon the world, the sense of imposture becomes too strong for her scrupulous nature. Victor, almost wilfully blind to what he causes her to suffer, pushes her from trial to trial; he uses the great house at Lakelands as base for a campaign to conquer society, he permits the Honourable Dudley Sowerby, the son of an earl, to become a suitor for their daughter's hand without knowing the truth about her birth — until Nataly takes things into her own hands and enlightens him — and he plunges finally into a project to enter Parliament. In the end Nataly's frail health succumbs — she dies, five hours before the death of Victor's wife would have finally set them free. The outward catastrophe is less significant then the inner defeat. Meredith shows how completely Nataly had been unmanned by the pressure of her false position in her manner of dealing with the problems brought up by their daughter Nesta, a noble girl, with "a nature pure and sparkling as mid-sea foam" and with ardent ideals and courage enough to forget discretion in a generous cause. When Nataly learns through Dudley Sowerby that her daughter has caused herself to be "talked about" by associating, out of the noblest motives, with a woman on whom society had cast a shade, she flies to the extremes of conventionality, takes the side of propriety and intolerance — goaded by the thought that the world will say "like mother, like daughter" — defends herself to herself, like any Philistine matron, by protests — which she was "too proud to phrase", however — that her daughter's upbringing had been irreproachable, and clutches at the hope that Dudley Sowerby, of whom she had never fully approved as a mate for her daughter, will remain true and will, by his character and station, guarantee protection to a girl whose capacities for indiscretion make her shudder. She is even grateful for Dudley's "indulgence" in not breaking off his engagement because of this shade, instead 162

of flaming in indignation at his coming complaining about it. It is for this breaking of Nataly's spirit that Meredith paints Victor's tragic end as a just retribution for a criminal vanity. If Victor Radnor could really be considered as a typical example of the snob's temperament, then he could have been cited by Werner Behmenburg as support for his theory that snobbish ambition grows out of English vitality. Made to be happy, to be successful and to be liked, he can only take a closed door as a challenge to overcome one more obstacle in his victorious progress. That the closed door that stirs his fighting energy in this case happens to be a social door is, however, more to be attributed to the peculiar circumstances he finds himself in than to a fundamental tendency in his character. In normal circumstances he would, one is sure, play for higher stakes than mere acceptance in certain complacent circles of conventional society. His vanity, which was very strong, took as a rule more grandiose visions for guidance. He liked to picture himself as the great benefactor of his country, had visions of great philanthropic schemes that would satisfy his genuine instincts of generosity at the same time as "coating a sensitive name" (Ch. 5, p. 36). Of the other marks of the snob he has none. He is full of a genuine good will to the classes of the population who have been less fortunate than himself, and if Meredith hints that he did not understand them particularly well (Ch. 1, p. 3) he casts no doubts on the sincerity of the feeling itself. And if he is pleased at the idea of his daughter's marrying the heir to an earldom, it is without any undue sense of her being especially honoured; it is he who winces when Nataly speaks of Sowerby's "indulgence". It is, in fact, his lack of sympathy for Dudley, the irreproachable, the perfect gentleman and prig, that makes him, in his moments of self-analysis, conscious of going contrary to his better instincts in his schemings of social grandeur. "Why be s c h e m i n g ? " Victor asked. Unlike the gallant soldiery, his question was raised in the blush of a success, from an examination of the quality of the thing won; although it had not changcd since it was first coveted; it was demonstrably the same: and an astonishing dry stick he held, as a reward for perpetual agitations and perversions of his natural tastes. Here was a Dudley Sowerby, the direct issue of the conceptions of Lakelands; if indeed they were not conceived together in one; and the young gentleman had moral character, good citizen substance, and station, rank, prospect of a title; and the grasp of him was firm. Yet so far was it from hearty, that when hearing a professed satirist like Colney Durance remark on the decorous manner of Dudley's courtship . . . that he appeared to be asking everybody: — Do you not think I bid fair for an excellent father of Philistines? — Victor had a nip of spite at the thought of Dudley's dragging him bodily to be the grandfather. (Ch. 19, p. 172.)

Victor is aware of the perverting effect the falseness of his situation has had on his real nature. Meredith shows him periodically haunted by an elusive idea of some way of bettering English life by an inner reform. Once, in a conversation that turned on the new battle between society and individualism he felt himself near his lost idea — an idea of Society leav163

ing behind the clumsy building of rigid conventions that were necessary for the cruder days of the past and taking on a more humane and civilized flexibility that would allow for the special case. He muses: " A Society based on the logical concrete of human considerateness: — a Society prohibiting to Mrs. B u r m a n " (his wife) "her wielding of a life-long rod . . . The personal element again to confuse inquiry! . . . Are civilized creatures incapable of abstract thought when their social position is d u b i o u s ? " Is there in Victor's question a hint of self-confession on Meredith's part? It seems not unlikely. But Meredith, whose nature is much closer to the over-scrupulous Nataly's than to Victor's, seems to have been more prone to make the negative reaction; far too self-conscious a critic of his own thoughts to take the pro domo line of reasoning, he leans to overconscientiousness in stating the other side. The attitude does honour to his breeding and fastidiousness, but one sometimes longs for a good human outburst of indignation at the prejudices he had reason to know could cause suffering. The comparative frankness of the satire in parts of this novel was probably made possible by the fact that although the dubious situation in society of his hero and heroine was in a way parallel to his own, their difficulties were caused more by moral prejudices than by purely social ones. Meredith could take a stand against the Pharisee with a conscience free of the reproach of self-interest. Dudley Sowerby is a figure who in Thackeray's hands would have supplied material for a withering chapter on Respectable Snobs. Meredith's greater forbearance is here a gain not only in subtlety but in human psychology. In spite of the extreme uncongeniality of the man's character to all of Meredith's sympathies, he is made credible and understandable. The satire, however, loses nothing of its bite for being accompanied by a strict regard for justice to the young man's undoubted well-meaningness. The following passage is especially devastating: Her father accused Nesta of snubbing him. She reproduced her famous copy of the sugared acid of Mr. Dudley Sowerby's closed mouth: a sort of sneer in meekness, as of humility under legitimate compulsion; deploring Christianly a pride of race that stamped it for this cowled exhibition: the wonderful mimicry was a flash thrown out by a born mistress of the art, and her mother was constrained to laugh, and so was her father; but he wilfully denied the likeness. He charged her with encouraging Colney Durance to drag forth the sprig of nobility, in the nakedness of evicted shellfish, on themes of the peril to England, possibly ruin, through the loss of that ruling initiative formerly possessed, in the days of our glory, by the titular nobles of the land. Colney spoke it effectively, and the Hon. Dudley's expressive lineaments showed print of the heaving word Alas, as when a target is penetrated centrally. And he was not a particularly dull fellow "for his class and country", Colney amitted; adding " I hit his thought and out he came." (Ch. 8, pp. 62/63.)

Nesta and Colney were, however, harsh critics — Colney the chronic satirist and pessimist and Nesta temporarily under the influence of an anti-aristocratic prejudice caused by her attribution of the snubs she knew her father had sometimes received, but of the real cause of which she was 164

ignorant, to an unjust prejudice of the nobly born against the class of merchants. But Victor himself, in spite of his obstinate determination to see only the best in Dudley, was sometimes seriously oppressed by his actual presence: They were in the Park — and here was this young Dudley saying, quite coramendably: "It's a pity we seem to have no means of keeping our parks select." Victor flung Simeon Fenellan at him in thought. He remembered a fable of Fenellan's, about a Society of the Blest, and the salt it was to them to discover an intruder from below, and the consequent accelerated measure in their hymning. (Ch. 19, p. 177.)

In the chapter headed "A Conventional Gentleman" Meredith shows Sowerby — now engaged to Nesta, who had come to have a less harsh judgment of him but had accepted him chiefly because she had seen that it would please her father — in the throes of the conflict between his love and his principles, brought on by the revelation of the circumstances of Nesta's birth. There would be family consultations, abhorrent; his father's agonized amazement at the problem presented to a family of scrupulous principles and pecuniary requirements; . . . always under condemnation of the Church: a blot: and handed down: Posterity, and it might be a titled posterity, crying out. A man in the situation of Dudley could not think solely of himself. The nobles of the land are bound in honour to their posterity. There you have one of the prominent permanent distinctions between them and the commonalty. (Ch. 26, p. 266.)

Meredith does Dudley the justice of showing that there was something of real conviction as well as conventionality and fear of the world's tongue in his hesitations, and that in the end it was genuine love and not the huge dowry that kept him true to Nesta. But the poor Dudley, still in the glow of his romantic decision, was destined to have his confidence shattered by a new blow. Nesta's association with the notorious Mrs. Marsett sets him on gloomy thoughts of the power of heredity and of a tinge in the blood. Even from this he recovers and the sentimental reader is moved to pity him when, after the catastrophe to Nesta's parents, he once more offers her a share of his earldom, only to learn that she is promised to another and more winning hero. We are given hints in Dudley of possibilities of a deeper conflict than Meredith chooses to give us. Dudley was one of his minor characters and apparently at first intended purely for satirical purposes. A higher form of the Dudley type is found in Galsworthy's Mertoun in The Patrician. In Mertoun the tragic possibilities in the patrician weighed down by responsibilities of caste and a too unyielding conscience when faced by a situation rather similar to Dudley's dilemma are brought out almost without satire, although Galsworthy confesses on rereading the book thirteen years after its composition that Mertoun makes him "shudder a little". What in the less complex Dudley is snobbery and pharisaism is in him an incapacity for true human sympathy and emotion, a fatality of his 166

blood and position, which expresses itself in a fanatical adherence to the authoritarian ideal in its traditional form, for which in the end h e sacrifices all his chances of normal human happiness. It is a curious parallelism that the contrast to Mertoun is given b y a m a n (Charles Courtier) who bears a close resemblance, in his capacity for generous enthusiasm and heroism, to Dartrey Fenellan, the rival of Dudley Sowerby. Another portrait that reminds us of Galsworthy's touch, a d o u b l e one in this case, is that of Victor's cousins, the maiden ladies Dorothea and Virginia Duvidney, "thin-sweet old-fashioned grey gentlewomen, demurely conscious of their excellence and awake to the temptation in t h e consciousness" (Ch. 23, p. 226). But the tiny tinge of snobbishness in these ladies, if so harsh a word may be used, is so innocuous that they can hardly b e given a place in our rogues' gallery. T h e delicacy of touch in Meredith's portrayal of their little foibles is the Comic Spirit at its best.

One of our Conquerors is the last of Meredith's novels in which the theme of snobbery is given real prominence. It is somewhat surprising to find h i m j u d g i n g Victor R a d n o r so harshly: Victor's tragic end — h e went m a d u p o n Nataly's death — Meredith appears to consider only a due expiation f o r the shallow vanity of his aims. Does this m e a n that Meredith's j u d g m e n t of snobbery is so implacable that he considers it only to be expiated by such t r a g e d y ? This would hardly be consistent with the development in Meredith's attitude toward snobbery as shown in his other works. We find h i m progressing toward an attitude of calm amusement at this f o i b l e of h u m a n nature and are hardly p r e p a r e d for an outburst of indignation at this late date. The explanation is doubtless to b e f o u n d in the circumstances peculiarly aggravating Victor's frivolity — t h e most important of these, his blindness to Nataly's suffering, is a part of his fundamental incapacity to f a c e disagreeable facts. This constitutional "optim i s m " , which Meredith contrasts to the equally one-sided pessimism and misanthropy of Colney Durance, is a source of strength in Victor so f a r as his practical career is concerned, but degenerates in spiritual things to a kind of moral cowardice that is akin to the sentimentalism of the P o l e family. Victor and Nataly had chosen to sin against the world's rules and could not expect at the same time to have the world's rewards. What was a d m i r a b l e in their courageous revolt against convention was diminished by Victor's incapacity to accept the consequences of it. Ambitions to succeed socially that for ordinary conventional citizens are merely an alltoo-human expression of comparatively harmless vanity, are a sign of moral defeat, a petulant kind of unreasonableness, when indulged in by a m a n who h a d once taken the proud stand of ignoring conventional patterns to secure a higher kind of happiness. One of our Conquerors, as said before, is the only one of Meredith's novels after Harry Richmond that may be said to have snobbery as one of its m a i n themes and for that reason the chronological order that h a s 166

otherwise been observed in this review of Meredith's works has been broken to treat this novel immediately after the group making up Meredith's first period. The other novels, too, bring a goodly number of snobtypes and references to English snobbery, which show that Meredith has by no means lost his interest in the subject but has merely relegated it to a secondary plan in order to centre his attention on the new problems that were preoccupying him. In the greatest of all of Meredith's character creations, Sir Willoughby Patterne in The Egoist, there is, as was inevitable perhaps in a portrait involving all the most subtle faults of the merely conventional English gentleman, a pervasive snobbery, but it is a snobbery that has certain limits drawn by the very intensity of the "egoism" that dominates the man's nature. Sir Willoughby was a "gentleman of family and property, an idol of a decorous island that admires the concrete", and fully enjoyed the eminence thus given him, without any desire to jeopardize it by striving for a connection with the circle technically above his own. When the ladies of his admiring court hint of a countess languishing for his favour he affects a profound independence from the conventional English predilection for the aristocracy. Why should he object to marry into our aristocracy? Mrs. Mountstuart asked him, and he replied, that the girls of that class have no money, and he doubted the quality of their blood. (Ch. 3, p. 16.)

If other passages reveal that the indifference to the social prejudices of his contemporaries here expressed was not quite wholehearted, still it may be assumed that his distaste for marrying into the aristocracy was sincere. There was a wonderful sagacity in Sir Willoughby's vanity that warned him when the delicious security of his complacency was endangered, and his instinct doubtless advised him that the trifling additional prestige he would gain in the eyes of the common world by a connection with aristocracy would be ill-bought by the discomfort of a relationship in which his wife or her relatives could have any reason to consider themselves superior to him. For Willoughby, as for Jane Austen's Sir Walter Elliot, personal vanity acts as a counteractive to the upward-striving tendency of snobbery. The very first episode in the novel, however, the visit of the heroic Lieutenant of Marines, Willoughby's cousin, reveals that the man who cared not to improve his social position was yet extremely sensitive to anything that might lower it in the eyes of the world. Sir Willoughby had been fond of talking of this distant relative after a newspaper report of his heroism had kindled the imagination of England, but when the man himself appeared at Patterne Hall, one glimpse of his shabby figure determined Willoughby, " a gentleman supremely advanced at a very early age in the art of cutting", to announce himself as "not at home". His acute instinct advised him swiftly of the absurdity of introducing to his friends a heavy unpresentable senior as the celebrated gallant Lieutenant of Marines, and the same as a member of his family! (Ch. 1, p. 8.)

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T h i s episode is, as B e a c h has noted, the illustration of a remark Meredith h a d m a d e about a year before in his lecture on the Idea of Comedy, with references to the comic theme of " p o o r r e l a t i v e s " : In the case of " p o o r relatives": . . . it is the rich, whom they perplex, that are really comic; and to laugh at the former, not seeing the comedy of the latter, is to betray dulness of vision. (p. 140.)

Lest any dull reader should m a k e that mistake about Sir Willoughby and the Lieutenant, Meredith points out the lurking " i m p s " of the comic spirit who, dating f r o m the h u m b l e departure of Lieutenant Patterne, took u p their station of observation to spy for the ridiculous in this model gentleman. T h e well-ordered l i f e at Patterne H a l l , with its carefully selected court of socially presentable satellites, m a d e the necessity for such direct action very rare. Willoughby's secret contempt for those not so blessed by fortune as himself usually betrayed itself in subtler forms, as in the O l y m p i a n condescension with which he treated the scholarly Vernon Whitford, another poor cousin, or the adoring Letitia Dale. Willoughby, l i k e the Poles and J a n e Austen's Elliots, liked to have a few dependents about him as continual reminders of his eminence. With Vernon he enj o y e d the subtle pleasure of appearing as a patron of scholarship. He liked his cousin to date his own controversial writings, on classical subjects, from Patterne Hall. It caused his house to shine in a foreign field; proved the service of scholarship by giving it a flavour of a bookish aristocracy that, though not so well worth having, and indeed in itself contemptible, is above the material and titular, one cannot quite say how. (Ch. 10, p. 86.)

Snobbery is by no means the m a i n ingredient of Willoughby's character, but it is an element without which this inspired portrait would certainly not be complete. A n d the thrusts m a d e at English snobbery through h i m are peculiarly telling because of their sober restraint and of the f a c t that they are directed at a m a n who lives u p so fully to all the canons of good f o r m . We are m a d e to feel the heavy complacency of such a remark as his " W e cannot, I apprehend, m o d i f y our class demarcations without risk of dislocating the social structure" (p. 60) with an art that is p e r h a p s m o r e effective satire than all the exposures of the grotesquer snobberies in Evan Harrington . In the Tragic Comedians the situation bears a certain resemblance in its main outlines to that in One of our Conquerors. A m a n at battle with society, flaming with a passion for a girl from the ranks of his most bitter opponents, succeeds in winning her love, but lets her slip out of his very hands because of the insane caprice that he will not accept a runaway bride but will in all honour win the consent of her p a r e n t s . ' His friends see the irony of the rebel's " s h y catching at the thread of an alliance with the decorous world". It can hardly b e said, however, that he is moved by mere s n o b b e r y ; it is rather the intoxication of p r i d e in a m a n whose dae168

monic capacity omnipotent.

of swaying men

has given h i m

the illusion

that he is

A variety of snobbish woman that we have met with very often in T h a c k e r a y appears in Diana of the Crossways in the person of Mrs., later L a d y , Wathin. She is a Respectable Snob burning with desire to m a k e her way in the best society, but turning for consolation, when her ambition is baffled, to the sense of her superior m o r a l virtues. Meredith calls her a m e m b e r of that " u p p e r m i d d l e class below the aristocratic, boasting an aristocracy of morals, and eminently persuasive of p u b l i c opinion, if not commanding i t " and points her out as representative of the " P u r i t a n rich of the period, emerging by the aid of an extending wealth into luxurious worldliness, and retaining the m a x i m s of their forefathers for the discipline of the poor and e r r i n g " (p. 128). While playing for the worldlystakes she keeps her conscious virtue always in reserve for falling back on in case of rebuff. She inspired her children with " t h e religion she opposed to the pretensions of a nobler blood, while instilling into them that the blood they drew f r o m her was territorial, f a r above the v u l g a r " (p. 128). Diana's success in the circles closed to her causes her to wax censorious on the nobility's lack of due regard f o r morality. If ambition is oversensitive, moral indignation is ever consolatory, for it plants us on the Judgement seat. There indeed we may, sitting with the very Highest, forget our personal disappointments in dispensing reprobation for misconduct, however eminent the offenders. (Ch. 21, p. 197.)

Lord Orntont and his Aminta and the Amazing Marriage represent a certain return, at the close of Meredith's work, to his earlier themes, in that the most conspicuous thing about the marriages in both stories is the discrepancy in social rank betwen h u s b a n d and wife. B u t in both cases the issues involved are of a much m o r e complex nature than simple snobbery. T h e story of Lord Ormont and his Aminta is that of an elderly noblem a n who marries a girl f r o m a middle-class f a m i l y , b u t refuses to acknowledge her before the world as his wife or to let her take her due place in society, thereby finally losing her to another man. In its outlines, then, apparently just another d r a m a growing out of the conflict between the ambition of the bourgeoisie and the exclusive p r i d e of the aristocracy. In reality, however, the story is not such a b a n a l one, at least as f a r as the conscious motives of the characters are concerned. Aminta h a d married the old L o r d Ormont not so much out of ambition as because he, the great soldier, h a d been her school-girl hero, while his reluctance to introduce her as his wife to English society is j u s t a part of the warrior's sulking in his tent at the shameless ingratitude shown h i m by the government. B u t the characters of this book are, as in all of Meredith's later works, highly complex and, alongside of their conscious motives, show tinges of snobbery that have after all some influence on their strange story and m a k e it impossible to omit this novel f r o m , a discussion of Meredith's 169

studies of social prejudice. Among the touches of clay in the great hero, Aminta was to discover, was a goodly share in the thoughtless prejudices of his class. He is an aristocrat of the old school, with a serene haughtiness quite undisturbed by any consciousness of a changing world. He is indulgently scornful of his secretary Weyburn's "ideas"; especially the suggestion that the nobles of the land should head a revolutionary effort of reform or else forfeit their "cast and headship with the generations to follow" he finds amazingly comical. "English nobles heading the weavers, cobblers, and barbers of England!" (p. 122) 1 1 0 he exclaims with contemptuous hilarity. Given this state of mind, which in itself is not unpicturesque, it is easy to think that in addition to a constitutional lack of imagination, which is the chief explanation of Lord Ormont's outrageous treatment of his wife, he may also have been moved by an old-fashioned aristocratic incredulity as to the genuineness of the wounded delicacy of a little bourgeoise. As for Aminta, at the peak of her disillusionment she confesses to herself that she had after all been moved by the "bitter ambition to be a fine lady"; she casts aside the excuse of hero-worship and paints herself in the darkest colours as consenting "to be a slave, that she might wear rich tissues; and let herself be fettered, that she might loll in idleness; lose a soul to win a title; escape commonplace to discover it ghastlier under cloth of gold, and the animal crowned, adored, fattened, utterly served, in the class called by consent of human society the Upper" (p. 185). Here the force of her emotion makes her unjust to herself; idealism — at first of a fairly primitive nature, and only blossoming into true intellectual ardour under Weyburn's influence — was stronger in her than materialism and vanity, and if Lord Ormont had had only his title and his fortune without the heroic halo of his past deeds, she might have been fleetingly tempted, but she would certainly not have married him. If the principals in the story have thus only a flight alloy of snobbery mingled with other ingredients, their seconds live up almost fully to the pattern of the story as the conflict between an attacking bourgeois and a defensive aristocratic snobbery. Mrs. Nargett Pagnell, Aminta's aunt, and Lady Charlotte Eglett, Lord Ormont's sister, who fortunately never meet in the course of the drama, are the really active combatants. Mrs. Pagnell is a conventional snob type, showing not much advance in fineness of characterization over the similar types in Thackeray. She worships titles, insists on the pronunciation of the cedilla in her name as a reminder of some vague Spanish grandee in her husband's family, boasts of the inevitable ancestor in the train of William the Conqueror, and considers her niece's brilliant marriage a triumph of her wise planning. n o The i d e a 0 f a transformed renascence of aristoratic leadership had once been a dream of Meredith's, until he became disillusioned about the quality of the English nobility. In 1867 he confessed to Morley (Lines to a Friend visiting America) that he had once been charmed by the legends of the heroic Norman origins of the English aristocracy to hope that they would head the country in magnanimous undertakings — " b u t alas, they go where they are pushed".

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S h e is amusing chiefly by a certain frankness in her ambitions: " S h e confessed herself a fly to a title. Where is the shame, if titles are created to a t t r a c t ? " , and once exclaims with comic conviction, " O h , that u p p e r class! It's a garden, and we can't help pushing to enter i t " (p. 84). L a d y Charlotte, whose opposition to Aminta's recognition develops gradually into something like fanaticism, takes the s a m e ground as Sir Austin F e v e r e l : good blood is all that counts. Meredith appears to have been especially interested by the curious mingling of reason and prejudice m a k i n g u p the conception of " g o o d b l o o d " . L a d y Charlotte h a d no veneration f o r titles as such; " s h e considered them a tinsel, and the devotee on his knee-caps to them a l u m p for a kick", although she added, with the downrightness characteristic of her, " O f course, I stand for my class, and if we can't have a manlier people . . . well, then let things go on as they a r e " (p. 154). T o her Aminta was a " w o m a n springing u p out of nothing", a woman of no distinctive birth. Her brother's wife must be " a person of lineage, of a certain station at l e a s t : no need for a titled woman, only for warranted good blood. Is that to b e found certificated out of the rolls of S o c i e t y ? It m a y just possibly be found, without certificate, however, in those m u d d l e d caverns where the excluded intermingle" (p. 38). If her brother was to marry out of his class, she persuaded herself to think she would have preferred his taking a girl f r o m a peasant family on the chance of bringing some "honest regenerating b l o o d " to the Ormont family. Weyburn, the idealist and iconoclast, was an interested observer of this " d e m o c r a t i c aristocrat", at once a "stickler for the privileges of her c l a s s " and a defender of eugenics. " S h e was rational in her f a s h i o n ; or Weyburn could at least see where and how the reason in her took a twist" (p. 154). Weyburn himself is another one of Meredith's non-snobs, m o r e thoughtful and m o r e revolutionary than L a d y Jocelyn, but with her humorous detachment. T o Aminta he was " a cool well-spring to talk with". He smiled in his merciful executioner's way at the high society, of which her aim was to pass for one among the butterflies or dragonflies; . . . he labelled our English classes t h e s k i m m e r s , t h e g o r g e r s , t h e g r u b b e r s , and stigmatized them with a friendly air. (Ch. 11, p. 120.)

I n Meredith's last novel, The Amazing Marriage, the outlines of the story and some of the problems of character treated have a decided resemblance to the preceding work. Here we have another capricious nobleman, another unrecognized wife, and another unconventional philosopher in the figure of Gower Woodseer, the " p h i l o s o p h e r t r a m p " (in part a portrait of Stevenson). I n his heroine Carinthia Meredith repeats the theme of the child of nature in face of an artificial social order. Her initiation into the mysteries of class distinctions is very similar to that of E m i l i a (pp. 67, 68). T h e figure of Gower Woodseer is testimony to Meredith's conviction that even f o r the most enlightened an attitude of really genuine indifference to the distinctions of class is, or was at the time he was writing, a 171

practical impossibility. Gower carries his scorn f o r t h e world's opinion into actual practice and in his long, almost penniless wanderings h e could believe t h a t his allegiance to n a t u r e and to philosophy were untinged with any of t h e more trivial considerations of other men. T h e fact t h a t his f a t h e r was a shoemaker he was accustomed to revealing without a touch of self-consciousness. B u t t h e meeting with Lord Fleetwood in t h e Alps t a u g h t h i m t h a t his philosophy was vulnerable after all. He was now anxious to let his companion know at once the common stuff he was made of, together with the great stuff he contained. He grew conscious of an over-anxiety, and was uneasy, dimly if at all apprehending the cause of his disturbance within. What is a lord to a philosopher! But the world is around us as a cloak, if not a coat; in his ignorance he supposed it specially due to a lord seeking acquaintance with him, that he should expose his condition: doing the which appeared to subject him to parade his intellectual treasures and capacity for shaping sentences; and the effect upon Lord Fleetwood was an incentive to the display. Nevertheless he had a fretful desire to escape from the discomposing society of a lord; he fixed his knapsack and began to saunter. (Ch. 8, p. 83.)

T h e experience makes h i m more critical of himself and at a later point h e catches himself being influenced to defend Lord Fleetwood's outrageous conduct by the subtle flattery of this wealthy nobleman's acknowledgment of h i m as his intellectual leader. The titled man affected the philosopher in that manner; or rather, the crude philosopher's relish of brilliant appreciation stripped him of liis robe. For he was with Owain Wythan at heart to scorn titles which did not distinguish practical offices. A nation bowing to them has gone to pith, for him; he had to shake himself, that lie might not similarly stick; he had to do it often. Objects elevated even by a decayed world have their magnetism for us unless we nerve the mind to wakeful repulsion. (Ch. 30, p. 343.)

Lord Fleetwood himself is. a young nobleman who flatters himself t h a t h e is "superior to station and to wealth, to all m u n d a n e advantages". Stirred to enthusiasm by Gower Woodseer, h e turns against t h e artificial life of his circle and persuades himself t h a t h e too is an apostle of n a t u r e . "A m a n w h o thinks, loathes their High Society" (p. 101), he tells Gower. I t would b e h a r d l y to b e expected t h a t the erratic Fleetwood could m a k e good a boast of u t t e r indifference to the prejudices f r o m which, as we have seen, even t h e philosophy of the much more intelligent Woodseer could not preserve h i m , and in fact it becomes evident in t h e course of the novel t h a t Fleetwood was partly deceiving himself on this point. B u t t h a t is not t h e i m p o r t a n t thing in this story. Fleetwood is certainly much less a snob t h a n t h e average m a n of his position and w e a l t h ; what M e r e d i t h saw in h i m could b e called the living r e s u l t o f s n o b b e r y , t h e result of a social system t h a t arbitrarily makes of an u n t r i e d young m a n an idol of w h o m everything is forgiven. Fleetwood was by n a t u r e a somew h a t unstable character, partly f r o m his Celtic blood, and t h e r e were flashes of evil in his character, b u t they were balanced by unusual quali172

ties, by fine sensibilities and by a real capacity for generous enthusiasm. Under ordinary circumstances he would have p r o b a b l y developed into a decent h u m a n being with a fair share in h u m a n happiness. B u t the almost unlimited power given him by his vast wealth and the unh e a l t h f u l adulation surrounding him from his childhood stir him, in spite of his vaunted indifference to them, to play the capricious tyrant, a n d in the end to ruin his own life as well as to injure a n u m b e r of the people about him. T h e crude sycophantry of his followers and dependents aroused only disgust in him, but he was not proof against the world's flattery in its subtler forms. Whatever he did was the object of eager discussion in the world and what would have been dismissed as villainy when done by an ordinary citizen b e c a m e picturesque when he did it. T o " D a m e Gossip", who plays the chorus in this comictragic d r a m a , he was a pleasantly exciting mystery. " N o one ever did comprehend the E a r l of Fleetwood, she says: he was bad, he was g o o d ; he was whimsical and steadfast; often a devil, sometimes the humanest of creatures" (p. 319). A n d when ordinary honest stirrings of remorse threaten to humiliate his pride, he prefers to take r e f u g e in this flattering fiction of his "mysteriously deep character" (p. 375). T h i s "pivotting of the whole marching and wheeling world upon the favoured of Fortune's habit and tastes" Meredith calls the " M a l a d y of the W e a l t h y " (p. 374). I n itself the idea of the nefarious effect of excessive adulation on character is of course not original. T h e nourishing of wastrels and coxcombs by a flunkey public was a favourite theme of Thackeray's and of other writers. Meredith's merit lies in tracing the same influence on the character of a m a n " n o t at all like the common run of rich young noblem e n " and sincerely convinced of his superiority to the opinion of the world. T h e force of the ideas of a "decayed world", as Meredith calls it, is proved by their power over the very people who are trying to escape f r o m them. Meredith's revival of interest in the theme dominating his early works, as shown in these two novels, takes indirecter methods of satire. T h e out-and-out snob appears now only among the minor characters; in the figures holding the centre of interest the snobbery is mixed, concealed, subconscious. T h i s is partly a consequence of the general increase in complexity of Meredith's psychology, and partly doubtless due to the f a c t that snobbery of the more brazen varieties was actually becoming rarer. Meredith's writings cover a period of some forty years, and during t h a t time E n g l a n d h a d become increasingly self-conscious about its social ideals. T h e era of naively open snobbery was giving way to the modern era of the "snob honteux", to use the expression of the Princesse de Bibesco. T h e old patterns of thought remained powerful but were being relegated to subterranean regions of consciousness.

173

At a first glance the most striking thing brought out by our review of Meredith's treatment of snobbery and related themes is the revelation of what a comparatively large share of his total work it represents. Meredith is popularly known for quite other themes, and yet his snob-figures can, in numerousness and variety, bear comparison with those of Thackeray. T h e reason for the comparative lack of attention this side of his work has attracted is probably to be found in the fact that, although, as we h a v e seen, there is much of originality in Meredith's method of treating the subject of snobbery, the theme itself was not new in t h e way his attacks on sentimentalism and civilized egoism were, and also by the fact that the two novels by which he is best known to the general public, the Egoist and Diana of the Crossways, have less to do with the subject than almost any of his other books. Meredith's interest in snobbery cannot be attributed merely to the elements in his personal situation that m a d e him especially sensitive on the subject. These may have h a d something to do with determining the quantity and the early date of his works devoted to it, but snobbery would h a v e inevitably attracted his attack even without this, since it is in opposition to his two dominant ideals: harmony with nature, and a truly civilized society according to his exacting standards. H i s Carinthias and E m i l i a s bring out the contrast between the world's j u d g m e n t s and the unspoiled perceptions of the natural spirit. Snobbish standards sin like the other standards he attacks, the " s e n t i m e n t a l " standards of refinement and the prudish ones of morality, in being opposed to nature. Rousseau could tell us this, however, just as well as Meredith. Meredith's real contribution lies in his setting u p an ideal of a higher and finer civilization based on a more rational selectivity than the rigid and irrelevant rules of so-called select society. T h e élite he is thinking of he might have called the community of the Comic Spirit, for it is the Comic Spirit, the spirit of order, grace, sanity, subtle self-criticism, that he considers the test of civilization. " A perception of the Comic Spirit gives high fellowship. Y o u become a citizen of the selecter world, the highest we know of in connection with our old world, which is not supermundane. L o o k there for your unchallengeable u p p e r c l a s s ! " (E. C., p. 143). Meredith is English in that he does not oppose to the conventional hierarchy an aristocracy of intellectual or artistic achievement, though of course he recognizes that aristocracy too. B u t for the purposes of civilization, for the pervading culture that lends grace to learning and art, there must be, for him, groups embodying a critical refinement that keeps in bounds the pedantry and conceit that the individualistic intellectual ideal is likely to fall into. Genius may flourish in a land that nevertheless lacks this higher spirit of civilization. Meredith's ideal is a social one, and it embodies many of the virtues claimed by conventional good society as its exclusive property. Out of the surface similarity of his ideal to the conventional standard there arises, f o r Meredith as for the English in 174

general, at once the danger of a thoughtless acceptance of ordinary undiscriminating class distinctions and the doubly urgent necessity for distinguishing between them and the ideal itself. It is significant that Meredith's young heroes fighting against the temptation of snobbery in themselves, E v a n Harrington and Harry Richmond, h a v e no ambitions for a real career. T h e i r diplomatic and political plans are frankly perfunctory. How different Evan's history would have been if in his struggles to escape f r o m the shop he h a d felt some real calling, h a d been, say, inspired by literary ambition like Meredith himself. T h e heroes in Meredith's earlier books are at bottom only concerned with being gentlemen, and it is for this reason that the p r o b l e m of the superficial as opposed to the essential idea of what being a gentleman means, and thereby the problem of snobbery, inevitably plays so great a role in their lives. It is true that to a modern English reader the books somewhat " d a t e " for this reason, and it is also true that Meredith in his later books turns to a m o r e active ideal, as in Nevil B e a u c h a m p and Matthew Weyburn, or a m o r e definitely intellectual and " p h i l o s o p h i c " one, as in Gower Woodseer, but the situation remains nevertheless typical of the English tradition, and is probably more of a p r o b l e m even today than the modern unpopularity of the conventional ideal of the gentleman would cause one to suppose. A n d Meredith, in spite of his merciless criticism of the E n g l i s h and his affectation of considering himself purely the Celt, is English in defending a typically English ideal in a typically English way. Without using the word snob, he in his books consciously makes the s a m e attack on the forces threatening to superficialize and eventually nullify the national ideal that the English people in general have m a d e in an instinctive fashion by their application of the "impertinent monos y l l a b l e " to these tendencies. Meredith succeeds, as we have said, in m a k i n g articulate and in harmonizing both sides of what in the average E n g l i s h m a n often exists side by side and half contradictorily — the ideal of good society and the dislike for snobbery. Thackeray only succeeded in m a k i n g the one side articulate. His attitude at the period of the Book of Snobs is more or less that of a willingness to throw over good society if it is only to be h a d at the price of snobbery. At a later period, as we have seen, he begins to feel the charm possible in the best worldly society and presents the amusing picture of a half-guilty succumbing to what he thinks he ought to consider wicked and snobbish. Having committed himself to a radical attitude of anti-worldliness he is u n a b l e even to have recourse to compromise. Not having clarified his ideas as to what really good society should b e like, he is not a b l e to look objectively at contemporary polite society, as Meredith does, and give credit where credit is due without falling into the error of indiscriminate acceptance. Meredith avoids compromise and unclarity by recognizing f r o m the very beginning that snobbery is not only the enemy of a democratic respect for the natural dignity of m a n but like175

wise the enemy of true good society. His non-snobs in Evan Harrington, Lady Jocelyn and Brewer Cogglesby, are distinguished from his antisnobs precisely by their respect for the amenities of society. Meredith's attack on snobbery is strengthened by his severe criticism of the English upper class of his day. — There are two ways of objecting to the social hierarchy recognized at a given time: by attacking the principle of selection itself, and by attacking the quality of the class actually at the head of it. It is conceivable that a bad principle of selection might, by a chance combination of other circumstances, lead to a fairly good choice after all. In other words, one may attack snobbery without attacking the aristocracy or the upper class. Meredith, like Thackeray, attacks both. His criticism of the English aristocracy of his time is constant from his first novel to his last. It is hard to see evidence, in his novels, of the period in which, according to his lines to Morley 1 1 1 , he was under the spell of the English nobility and hoped to see them take a position of leadership in English life. From Adrian's acrid remarks in Richard Feverel, through the Professor's strictures in Harry Richmond, to the very sharp comments in Lord Ormont and the living illustrations of them in the characters of the Amazing Marriage, Meredith gives undisguised expression to his dissatisfaction with the "class called by consent of human society the Upper". He preserves an attitude of objectivity by presenting occasional sympathetic aristocratic figures in his novels and by conceding to the best circles of the upper class the one virtue of manners, which he does not underrate 1 1 2 . No attempt has been made here to record Meredith's utterances on this point in full, since its connection with our theme is only indirect. But a connection there is, and one of a certain importance in the p r a c t i c a l efficacy of Meredith's attack on snobbery. For purposes of effective satire, it must be admitted that an attack on snobbery in general is considerably reinforced by criticism of the class idolized by snobbery. The general public is likely to be left unmoved by the contention, as made, for example, in the Saturday Review article quoted in the Introduction, that what it has been admiring is good in itself but that its way of admiring has been at fault. In general, however, Meredith is not led by the exclusive desire to secure satiric effectiveness. His weapons are not the heavy artillery of satire that Thackeray had used, but the lighter arms of the Comic Spirit. The revelations he indirectly makes in some of his books of the positive ferocity sometimes reached by English snobbery in those days are, however, even when discounted by what one must allow for his peculiar sensitivity, sufficient to justify all of Thackeray's vigour of attack. And it See p. 170 above. Cf. Amazing Marriage: " H i s class had nothing to please him but manners" (p. 198) and the description of L o r d Fleetwood at Woodseer's marriage: " H e was the born nobleman in his friendliness with the bridal pair and respectfulness to Mr. Woodseer. High social breeding is an exquisite performance on the instrument we are. . . . Condescension was not seen, his voice had no false note" (p. 526). 111

112

176

may well be that for the disease in t h a t acute stage the more radical measures of a Thackeray were better calculated to cause a cure t h a n those of Meredith, even though the former were sometimes, f r o m the view of a strict objectivity, applied a trifle undiscriminatingly. But Meredith had no ambition to be the kind of reformer who sacrifices accuracy for the sake of securing results. If he had he would not have been true to his nature, nor to his peculiar capacities, which led h i m to see and to express the infinite complexity of all h u m a n and social problems. At bottom he is one with Thackeray in his dislike of snobbery, but he does not ignore the fact that in the individual snobbery may be strangely mingled with qualities admirable in themselves and that in the community it may have complex interrelations with the forces making for civilization. W h a t he sacrifices in satiric force is thus made u p for by richness of psychological perception.

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C h a p t e r III. MARCEL

PROUST.

Biographical

Notes.

Marcel Proust's life was outwardly uneventful in the extreme. He was born in 1871, the son of a distinguished physician, and spent his childhood in the atmosphere of the well-to-do French bourgeoisie. His later life is divided into two distinct periods that present a startling contrast. At an astonishingly early age he penetrated into some of the most exclusive circles of French society and for a number of years led the life of a popular young man of the world. His unusual gifts seem to have been recognized by his many worldly friends, but since they were apparently unsparingly put in the service of the society he was associating with, were, so to speak, domesticated for the consumption of the salons, they served merely to add a spice to his social assets, his charm of manner, good breeding and extreme amiability, and to make of him an "interesting" guest, without arousing the malaise that Proust himself later comments on as the almost inevitable reaction of society to a too great talent. Proust's literary production during this period was extremely slight, consisting in a small book, Les plaisirs et les jours (1896), which was looked on by the critics of the day as showing promise but was apparently not widely read, a few articles published in Figaro and other papers and periodicals, and a translation of Ruskin accompanied by an able preface. Proust's existence in the second period of his life was that of a hermit. Illness and a sudden determination to devote the rest of his life to a large literary work, made of him a voluntary exile in the midst of Paris, living in an almost hermetically sealed room because of his acute asthma, visited only by his most intimate friends and practically never going out himself. In twelve years of this strange kind of life Proust wrote A la recherche du temps perdu, his great novel, or cycle of novels, which embodied all the observations and experiences of his earlier life. In 1922, his long invalidism was brought to an end by death, which he had always known would come to him early and which it would almost seem had only been held off so long by his tremendous will to finish his life-work. It was inevitable that Proust's great worldly success should have caused him to be accused of snobbery. A discussion of "ce grief banal invoqué contre Marcel Proust" and an able defense of him against it are 178

t o b e f o u n d i n Au bal avec Marcel Proust b y P r i n c e s s B i b e s c o , w h o k n e w h i m personally and whose cousins, E m m a n u e l and A n t o i n e Bibesco, were a m o n g h i s c l o s e s t f r i e n d s . T h e r e is l i t t l e t h a t c o u l d b e a d d e d t o t h i s discussion, but it m a y b e w o r t h w h i l e to record t h e occasional statements by Proust himself in his letters w i t h reference to his supposed snobbery. I n a l e t t e r t o R o b e r t d e M o n t e s q u i o u , w r i t t e n d u r i n g t h e t i m e of h i s exile f r o m the world, h e shows that t h e accusation has t h e p o w e r to hurt him: "L' idée que vous avez l'air d'avoir, que le snobisme dirige le choix de mes sorties (ce qui me conduirait toujours aux endroits où vous parlez) m'étonne encore plus qu'elle ne m'humilie. Le déclassement et le réclassement des plaisirs pendant la maladie et quand on est privé d'à peu près tous, est si net et si sincère qu'il nous semble forcément que tout le monde devrait deviner ce qui est si clair en nous, dirige toutes nos actions vers des buts si nobles et si désintéressés, ou voudrait les diriger, si le corps pouvait suivre. Si vous saviez toutes les choses pour lesquelles j'ai fait d'imprudences, et toutes celles qui m'ont laissé un regret profond, vorus verriez que la mondanité y a peu de p a r t ! " (Lettre CXXXIII, Correspondance générale I, p. 127.) I n a l e t t e r t o M a d a m e Sert h e a n s w e r s t h e q u e s t i o n , " £ t e s - v o u s s n o b ? " i n a lighter spirit. "Je vous assure que la seule personne dont la fréquentation pourrait faire dire que je suis snob, c'est vous. Et ce ne serait pas vrai. Et vous serez la seule à croire que je vous fréquente par vanité plutôt que par admiration. Ne soyez pas si modeste. . . . Si dans les très rares amis qui continuent par habitude à venir demander de mes nouvelles il passe ça et là encore un duc ou un prince, ils sont largement compensés par d'autres amis dont l'un est valet de chambre et l'autre chauffeur d'automobile et que je traite mieux. Ils se valent d'ailleurs. Les valets de chambre sont plus- instruits que les ducs et parlent un plus joli français, mais ils sont plus pointilleux sur l'étiquette et moins simples, plus susceptibles. Tout compte fait ils se valent." (Au Bal avec Marcel Proust, p. 181.) A t a n e a r l i e r s t a g e of h i s l i f e w e find h i m , i t i s t r u e , u s i n g t h e w o r d h i m s e l f t o d e s c r i b e c e r t a i n of h i s tastes, i n a l e t t e r t o A n t o i n e B i b e s c o . "Quant à dîner chez la princesse de C . . . avec toi, rien en principe ne m'aurait mieux convenu puisque je m'habille pour aller chez les Strauss et n'y dîne pas. Mais à cause des personnes qu'il y a à dîner chez ta cousine, je préfère y dîner une autre fois, ces personnes rentrant dans la catégorie des gens du monde qui ne m'amusent pas, pour des raisons trop longues à écrire et qui n'intéressent d'ailleurs que la psychologie de mon snobisme." (Au Bal avec Marcel Proust, p. 169.) T h e " p s y c h o l o g y of h i s s n o b b e r y " h e r e f e r s t o is t h e d e l i g h t i n m e e t i n g a n d o b s e r v i n g p e o p l e w h o s e n a m e s a n d d e s c e n t are s u r r o u n d e d f o r h i m w i t h t h e p o e t i c a u r a of t h e m e m o r i e s of all t h e m e n o r w o m e n b e a r i n g t h a t n a m e i n t h e p a s t , w h o s e figures are k n o w n t o h i m t h r o u g h port r a i t s or m e m o i r s ( c o m p a r e h i s l e t t e r t o A n t o i n e B i b e s c o a b o u t G o r d o n L e n n o x , w h o m h e t h o u g h t t o b e t h e d e s c e n d a n t of a n o t h e r L e n n o x , t h e D u k e of R i c h m o n d , w h o s e p o r t r a i t b y V a n D y c k h e k n e w a n d a d m i r e d ) . Of t h i s k i n d of p o e t i c s n o b b e r y , w h i c h , if i t w a s s i n c e r e — a n d i n v i e w of 179

Proust's taste for a kind of aesthetic antiquarianism we have every reason to believe it was —, was something very different from the vulgar vanity that was suspected of having been the motive of his social activity, he has much to say in A la recherche du temps perdu and it is thus at a later point that we shall have to consider whether this is real snobbery or something different. Early

and

minor

work.

In the book of Proust's youth, Les plaisirs et les jours, the subject of snobbery and the words "snob" and "snobisme" occur very frequently, especially in the earlier sketches, which, we learn from the preface, were written when he was only twenty. The pleasure he seems to have in using the expressions suggests that they were possibly a recent acquisition in his vocabulary and that the use of them had a certain prestige in his eyes. Most of the studies of snobbery are marked by a youthful severity. In Contre une snob, a brief character sketch, he shows a woman who leaves all the pleasures of a very fortunate life to pay slavish attentions to people she does not care for, to men who are old, stupid and ugly, as if she had committed a crime and they were judges who must be bought off, all because she has "cette terrible malédiction, elle est snob". Un diner en ville is the description of a whole dinner-table full of people who, different as they are from each other, are all possessed by the one ruling passion, snobbery. Violante, ou la mondanité is a youthful sermon against the love of the world and has as heading a text from the Imitation: "Ayez peu de commerce avec les jeunes gens et les personnes du monde . . . Ne désirez point de paraître devant les grands." The choice of this theme confirms the impression given by certain apparently autobiographical touches in A la recherche du temps perdu that Proust's period of worldliness was by no means free of pricks of conscience. Violante also shows, incidentally, that Proust's belief in the mediocrity of the gens du monde was by no means, as usually supposed, the reaction only of his mature years when he had turned from the world: "Les gens du monde sont si médiocres" etc. (p. 59). Of rather more interest is his analysis, in Les amies de la comtesse Myrto, of the attitude of a snob toward her friends in different social positions; to those above her and far below her, and to those of equal position Myrto is well-disposed, but to Doris, whose position is just a step beneath her own, and who longs to become her friend, her ill-will is implacable — "déplaisant, comme Myrto, par une disproportion fâcheuse entre son rang et celui où elle aspire, elle lui présente l'image de son vice" (p. 69). In Snobs the young Proust gives an interesting analysis of why snobbery is the unavowable sin. Une femme ne se cache pas d'aimer le bal, les courses, le jeu même. Elle le dit, ou l'avoue simplement, ou s'en vante. Mais n'essayez pas de lui faire dire qu'elle

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aime le chic ("aimer le chic" or "donner dans le chic" are Proust's phrases at the time for "être snob"), elle se récrierait, se fâcherait tout de bon. C'est la seule faiblesse qu'elle cache soigneusement, sans doute parce que seule elle humilie la vanité. Elle veut bien dépendre des carte6, non des ducs. Parce qu'elle fait une folie, elle ne se croit inférieure à personne; son snobisme implique au contraire qu'il y a des gens à qui elle est inférieure ou le peut devenir, en se relâchant. (p. 75.) F i n a l l y , i n A une Snob, P r o u s t g i v e s a m o r e i n d u l g e n t p i c t u r e of s n o b b e r y t h a t s h o w s t h a t a t t w e n t y h e h a d a l r e a d y g i v e n s o m e t h o u g h t to t h e k i n d of s n o b b e r y t h a t h a s a certain poetry. On vous dit vaine? Mais l'univers n'est pas vide pour vous, il est plein d'armoiries. C'est une conception du monde assez éclatante et symbolique. N'êtes-vous pas instruite? . . . En lisant le récit des batailles que les ancêtres avaient gagnées, vous avez retrouvé le nom des descendants que vous invitez à dîner et par cette mnémotechnie vous avez retenu toute l'histoire de France. De là une certaine grandeur dans votre rêve ambitieux auquel vous avez sacrifié votre liberté, vos heures de plaisir ou de réflexion, vos devoirs, vos amitiés, l'amour même. Car la figure de vos nouveaux amis s'accompagne dans votre imagination d'une longue suite de portraits d'aieux. . . . Votre rêve solidarise le présent au passé. L'âme des croisades anime pour vous de banales figures contemporaines et si vous relisez si fiévreusement vos carnets de visite, n'est-ce pas qu'à chaque nom vous sentez s'éveiller, frémir et presque chanter, comme une morte levée de sa dalle blasonnée, la fastueuse vieille France. (pp. 78, 79.)

et Mélanges a n d Chroniques, the two other volumes that I n Pastiches unite the essays on literary and artistic matters and the g r a c e f u l but purp o s e l y u n c r i t i c a l r e p o r t s o n p e r s o n a l i t i e s a n d s a l o n s of t h e F a u b o u r g S t . G e r m a i n t h a t m a k e u p t h e b u l k of P r o u s t ' s w o r k a s i d e f r o m A la recherche du temps perdu, t h e r e is l i t t l e t h a t h a s to d o w i t h s n o b b e r y . T h e r e is, however, in the article on " L e salon de la Princesse Mathilde", which i n 1903, o n e p a s s a g e o f g r e a t s i g n i f i c a n c e , o r i g i n a l l y a p p e a r e d i n Figaro i n t h a t it e x p r e s s e s i n p r o g r a m m a t i c f o r m P r o u s t ' s a i m o f c o m p l e t e obj e c t i v i t y i n c o n s i d e r i n g t h e d i f f e r e n t s o c i a l c l a s s e s , a n d at t h e s a m e t i m e i s h i s a n s w e r ( i n a d v a n c e ) to t h e r e p r o a c h e s s o m e t i m e s m a d e of h i m t h a t h e g i v e s a n u n d u e s h a r e o f h i s a t t e n t i o n t o t h e u p p e r c i r c l e s of s o c i e t y . Un artiste ne doit servir que la vérité et n'avoir aucun respect pour le rang. Il doit simplement en tenir compte dans ses peintures, en tant qu'il est un principe de différenciation, comme par exemple la nationalité, la race, le milieu. Toute condition sociale a son intérêt et il peut être aussi curieux pour l'artiste de montrer les façons d'une reine, que les habitudes d'une couturière. (Chroniques, p. 22.)

A la recherche

du temps

perdu.

I n Le temps retrouvé, t h e l a s t n o v e l of h i s g r e a t c y c l e , P r o u s t d e s c r i b e s , i n a p a s s a g e c e r t a i n l y m e a n t to a p p l y t o h i s o w n w o r k , h o w h i s y o u n g h e r o c a m e to t h e d e c i s i o n of d e d i c a t i n g t h e r e s t of h i s l i f e to a w o r k o f a r t , a n d t h e w a y i n w h i c h h e c o n c e i v e d of w h a t h e h a d to s a y to t h e w o r l d a n d t o p o s t e r i t y . W e s e e i n t h i s p a s s a g e ( T e m p s retrouvé, C h a p . I l l ) t h a t P r o u s t m a d e a c l e a r l i n e of d e m a r c a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e p a r t of h i s w o r k 181

that represented psychological observation as recorded by the intellect, and the other, for him more important, part of what he had to say, his "intimations of immortality", one might say, or better, his intimations of a life outside of time, which were brought to him so curiously by the strangely sweet flood of memories sometimes evoked by such trivial things as the famous cup of tea in which he had dipped a biscuit, or, still more prosaically, by stumbling against the doorstep of a friend. The truths brought by the intelligence are for him a secondary, less precious material, though serving as a useful frame for these intuitions of the Extratemporal. J e sentais . . . q u e ces vérités q u e l'intelligence d é g a g e d i r e c t e m e n t d e l a r é a l i t é ne sont p a s à d é d a i g n e r entièrement car elles p o u r r a i e n t enchâsser d'une m a t i è r e m o i n s p u r e m a i s encore p é n é t r é e d'esprit ces i m p r e s s i o n s qui n o u s a p p o r t e n t h o r s du t e m p s l'essence c o m m u n e a u x sensations du p a s s é et du présent, m a i s q u i p l u s p r é c i e u s e s sont aussi trop rares p o u r q u e l ' o e u v r e d'art p u i s s e être c o m p o s é e seulement avec elles. C a p a b l e s d'être utilisées p o u r cela, j e sentais se presser en m o i une f o u l e de vérités relatives a u x p a s s i o n s , a u x caractères, a u x m o e u r s . (T. R. II, p. 53113.)

In dealing with Proust's treatment of snobbery we are, of course, confined to this unmystical, psychological side of his work, and consequently to the part which he considered the less important. We are, however, on less debatable ground, for if opinions are divided as the value of the more philosophical part of Proust's work there is practical unanimity in regarding him as a masterly psychologist. Imagination and snobbery. In a letter written to Lucien Daudet during the war Proust says that in his book he has tried to show the fashionable world through the eyes of a person as yet strange to it and who sees it "avec ce qu'il peut y avoir de poésie dans le snobisme 1 1 4 ". He thus himself authorizes us to apply the word snobbery to the imaginative enthusiasm that causes the central character in his novel to enter into Parisian society with a world of illusions about the people with great and historic names he meets there. This young man, who is generally supposed to be in large part a self-portrait, 1 1 3 T h i s p a s s a g e s e e m s to clear u p a p o i n t that t r o u b l e s M. S e i l l i è r e ( s e e the last chapter of his b o o k on P r o u s t ) . H e is u n d e r the i m p r e s s i o n that P r o u s t c l a i m s a mystical, s u p e r n a t u r a l inspiration f o r h i s w h o l e w o r k , and r e m a r k s that, on the contrary, m u c h of it shows clearly the m a r k s of " d e l o n g u e s années d'observation consciente, d ' é t u d e s p s y c h o l o g i q u e s a s s i d u e s , de culture générale i n t e n s e " (p. 282). T h e unconscious, half-mystic m o d e of origin is in h i s o p i n i o n " t o u t au p l u s celui des parties p o é t i q u e s d'A la recherche du temps perdu q u i tiennent p e u de p l a c e d a n s l ' o e u v r e : ce fut dans une b e a u c o u p m o i n d r e m e s u r e celui de la portion psychol o g i q u e , la p l u s i m p o r t a n t e et la p l u s intéressante à m o n a v i s " (p. 287). I s this not very m u c h what P r o u s t says in the p a s s a g e q u o t e d a b o v e ? — with only the difference, of course, that S e i l l i è r e d i f f e r s f r o m P r o u s t in his estimate of the rel a t i v e v a l u e a n d significance of the two parts. 114 Autour de soixante lettres de Marcel Proust, p. 157.

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although Proust only admits this with reservations ("le narrateur qui dit ' j e ' et qui n'est pas toujours m o i 1 1 5 " ) , experiences this "poetry of snobbery", as an adolescent, naively, unconsciously, in contrast to another important figure of the book, the Baron de Charlus, in whom it is a very conscious aesthetic attitude. We see young Marcel (Proust gives his own Christian name on several occasions to the narrator of his story) as a child in the village of Combray, where his parents spend their summers, centring all his ideas of history and chivalry and the Middle Ages about the name of Guermantes, that of the ducal family who have their properties near Combray and who have at the time one of the most brilliant positions in the social world of Paris. In his child's world of fancy some of the ancestors of the Guermantes are just as familiar but magic figures as the characters in his favourite fairytales. In the old church at Combray he sees every Sunday a stained-glass figure of Gilbert le Mauvais, a Guermantes of the Middle Ages; and Geneviève de Brabant, another Guermantes, was the heroine of a mediaeval legend that the young Marcel knew especially well from having illustrations of it in his magic-lantern. The consequence is that the name of Guermantes takes on a glamour that sets it worlds apart from other names. J e savais q u e ( l e s G u e r m a n t e s ) étaient d e s p e r s o n n a g e s réels et actuellement existants, m a i s c h a q u e f o i s q u e j e p e n s a i s à eux, j e m e les représentais tantôt en tapisserie, c o m m e était la comtesse d e G u e r m a n t e s , d a n s le " C o u r o n n e m e n t d ' E s t h e r " de notre église, tantôt de n u a n c e s changeantes c o m m e était G i l b e r t le M a u v a i s d a n s le vitrail . . . , tantôt tout à fait i m p a l p a b l e s c o m m e l ' i m a g e de G e n e v i è v e d e B r a b a n t , ancêtre d e la f a m i l l e d e G u e r m a n t e s , q u e la lanterne m a g i q u e p r o m e n a i t sur les r i d e a u x d e m a c h a m b r e ou faisait m o n t e r au p l a f o n d — enfin t o u j o u r s e n v e l o p p é s du mystère des t e m p s m é r o v i n g i e n s et baignant c o m m e d a n s un c o u c h e r de soleil dans la l u m i è r e o r a n g é e q u i é m a n e de cette syllabe: "antes"116. ( S . I, p . 246.)

From unreal figures in stained-glass and tapestry, the Guermantes were destined, in the course of a few years and by quite natural steps, to become the everyday friends of Marcel. The story of how this took place is that of a constant alternation of illusion and disillusionment, the struggle between imagination and reality. The first disappointment was the glimpse Marcel had of the Duchesse Oriane de Guermantes at a wedding in the Combray church. Filled with the unreasonable expectation of seeing the embodiment of all the mystery and unreal beauty he had put into the syllables of her name, he felt cheated at seeing a woman who could, it is true, be called pretty, even beautiful, but who had a human kind of beauty that could be compared to that of other women he had seen who had no share in the glamour of her name. This first glimpse, however, was so brief that his disappointment soon wore off, with Chroniques, p. 210. S e i l l i è r e s u g g e s t s that P r o u s t w a s e n d o w e d with the c o l o u r e d a u d i t i o n that w a s illustrated b y R i m b a u d in his f a m o u s sonnet. 115

116

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the help of his imagination, which immediately set to work to retouch his memory of the Duchess and to restore her to her place as a figure of mystery. So much so, that when, in Paris, Marcel's family became neighbours of the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes, and he could see her every day on her morning walks, he fell in love with, adored her from a distance, and lived only for the hope of being admitted to her salon. Having received no encouragement from the Duchess, his fancy-fed love soon died a natural death, but all his imagination centred about her salon, which was known as one of the most brilliant in Paris, and which he peopled with supernatural beings and attractions. In the course of time, through his friendship with the duchess's nephew, the Marquis de Saint-Loup, he received the long-wished for invitation, only to find, as was to be expected, that the salon and its habitués were neither supernatural nor especially mysterious. He had to go through this same experience with the salon of the Prince and Princess of Guermantes, which being more traditional, more "ancien régime" than that of the duchess, who prided herself on a certain freedom from aristocratic prejudices, promised to have more of the picturesque atmosphere he was looking for, but left him with the same feeling of dissatisfaction. For each one of these disappointments Marcel's intelligence had prepared him. But it was in vain that he told himself that these salons would be like other salons: each time his imagination set up the same unreasonable expectations — it is, in fact, one of Proust's convictions that the intelligence and the imagination have few means of communication with each other. It is necessary to distinguish between this first disappointment about the Guermantes and the other people whose names had aroused his imagination, from his later recognition of their essential mediocrity, which came from the cool balancing off of their faults and virtues by an intelligent, critical but just observer. His first disappointment was unreasonable, unjust, and had no necessary connection at all with the actual value of the persons involved. Even had the duchess been the most beautiful woman in Paris, her guests the cream of the earth in intelligence and culture, he would have been disappointed at finding merely beauty and intelligence that could be compared with that of other people whom he had not first known through the transforming light of imagination. In the same way his dreams about the cities he longed to visit, about Florence and Venice and Balbec, had aroused expectations that no city built by human hands could ever have satisfied. When Marcel had reached the stage of indifference about the Guermantes, he was even able to recapture something of the poetry he had at first associated with their name. De même que Balbec ou Florence, les Guermantes après avoir déçu l'imagination parce qu'ils ressemblaient plus à. leurs pareils qu'à leur nom, pouvaient ensuite quoique à un moindre degré, offrir à l'intelligence certaines particularités qui les distinguaient. (G. II, p. 117.)

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Thus in the faintly provincial accent retained by Madame de Guermantes he caught something of the charm of the French countrysides where her family's properties were situated, and in the bird-like grace of certain members of the Guermantes family he found an "ornithological" charm that reminded him of the fanciful genealogies of the sixteenth century according to which their race sprang from the union of a bird and a nymph. Whether or not the susceptibility to the poetry of old names which Proust describes in his hero can, when it is free of the vanity of having fashionable relations, be really called snobbery, there can be no denying that some of its manifestations must have looked very much like it to the uninitiated observer. And Proust's sympathetic reconstruction of what was probably the attitude of his own early youth is a plea for a more charitable interpretation than is usually given to the fascination exercised by great names. This "defense of snobbery" is made more explicit when he speaks of "les romanciers mondains qui analysent cruellement du dehors les actes d'un snob ou prétendu tel, mais ne se placent jamais à l'intérieur de celui-ci, à l'époque où fleurit dans l'imagination tout un printemps social" (S. G. I, p. 168). For completeness it must be recorded that Proust's hero had, in his adolescent days, certain touches of that more ordinary kind of social vanity that seems inseparable from extreme youth, as both Thackeray and Meredith testify. We see him at Balbec suffering secret tortures because his grandmother insists on discussing the prices of rooms in the luxurious hotel where the manager shows the contempt of his class for people who confess to the necessity of economy (J. F. II, p. 88) ; and we see him afraid to invite his playmate Gilberte for fear she might think that his mother's habit of serving chocolate to the children instead of tea was "commun" (J. F. I, p. 204). Grown older, he remembers, when he revisits his friends, "qu'autrefois j'aurais cru me diminuer aux yeux de Mme. de Guermantes en avouant la petite situation que ma famille occupait à Combray" (T. R. I, p. 135) and finds himself, in a situation something like Meredith's, embarrassed at the possible necessity of an "explication rétrospective" of something that had become in itself indifferent to him. The other character in whom Proust has shown the susceptibility to the poetry of the great names in the French aristocracy is generally recognized as his masterpiece in character-drawing. Palamède Baron de Charlus, Duc de Brabant, Damoiseau de Montargis, Prince d'Oléron, de Carency, de Viazeggio et des Dunes is a snob on a grand scale who differs from most of his literary predecessors by being also a grand seigneur. He is a Richmond Roy whose titles are genuine. And his snobbery, like that of Richmond Roy, is a passion taking on such fantastic proportions as to reach the very verge of mental abnormality. Charlus is, at the time we become acquainted with him, the capricious tyrant of the Faubourg St. Germain. Rich, aristocratic, talented, he holds 185

all the p r o u d mistresses of the best houses in P a r i s under his spell, partly by means of his undeniable charm and partly by the f e a r of his ruthless tongue, always ready to thunder out denunciations of those who h a v e displeased him. H e plays the rôle of grand seigneur, for which he was fitted by his birth and by his physical appearance, with all the zest of a vivid imagination for which the great days of the French nobility in the past, and the preoccupation with etiquette and precedence of a Saint-Simon, are m o r e real than the realities of the French republic at t h e turn of the century. T h a t he did not m a k e the impression of an utter fantast and Don Q u i x o t e on his fellows was only due to the fact that the circles with which he came in contact, the rich and idle F a u b o u r g St. G e r m a i n and its satellite regions, were themselves essentially but little touched by the realities of the democratic and industrial age in which they were living, however much they m a y h a v e flattered themselves on their modernity. Charlus h a d a summary manner of dividing society into the possible and the impossible that was rather misleading f o r such newcomers in society as his protégé Morel, the violinist, who took his words literally. " I l y un certain nombre de familles prépondérantes, . . . avant tout les Guermantes, qui comptent quatorze alliances avec la Maison de France, ce qui est d'ailleurs surtout flatteur pour la Maison de France, car c'était à Aldonce de Guermantes et non à Louis le Gros, son frère consanguin mais puîné, qu'aurait dû revenir le trône de France. . . . Fort au-dessous des Guermantes, on peut cependant citer les Trémoïlle, descendants des rois de Naples et des Comtes de Poitiers; les d'Uzès, peu anciens comme famille, mais qui sont les plus anciens pairs; les Luynes, tout à fait récents mais avec l'éclat de grandes alliances; les Choiseul, les Harcourt, les L a Rochefoucauld. Ajoutez encore les Noailles, malgré le Comte de Toulouse, les Montesquiou, les Castellane et, sauf oubli, c'est tout. Quant à tous les petits messieurs qui s'appellent marquis de Cambremerde ou de Vatefairefiche, il n'y a aucune différence entre eux et le dernier pioupiou de votre régiment." (S. G. III, p. 181.)

Even in his own family, the Guermantes, Charlus liked to be treated with the respect due to his rank. H e objected to being called P a l a m è d e , not because he did not like the name, but because he would h a v e preferred to be called " C h a r l u s " , as was the custom in royal families. T h e height of exaltation to which Charlus' p r i d e and insolence could rise are shown in the strange interview Marcel h a d with h i m when the B a r o n had intimated that h e m i g h t b e inclined to extend his favour to the young boy. After having penetrated to the presence of the B a r o n with as much difficulty and ceremony as in the antichamber of a king, the young man is forced, after some t i m e of conversation in which he stood and the B a r o n reclined on a couch, to ask if he m a y sit down, not knowing that Charlus so enjoyed playing the king that in his château he h a d the habit of seating himself in the smoking-room after dinner and leaving his guests standing until it should please h i m to request them graciously is to be seated. T h e b a d effect m a d e by this first piece of lèse-majesté deepened when Marcel u n h a p p i l y uses the word " l i é " to express his relationship to the B a r o n . T h e reaction is overwhelming: 186

Il sourit avec dédain, fit monter sa voix jusqu'aux plus extrêmes registres, et là, attaquant avec douceur la note la plus aigiie et la plus insolente: " O h ! monsieur, dit-il . . . j e pense que vous vous faites tort à vous-même, en vous accusant d'avoir dit que nous étions 'liés' . . . J e ne pense pas, que vous ayez dit, ni cru, que nous étions l i é s ! Quant à vous être vanté de m'avoir été p r é s e n t é , d'avoir c a u s é avec moi, de me c o n n a î t r e un peu, d'avoir obtenu presque sans sollicitation de pouvoir être un jour mon p r o t é g é , j e trouve au contraire fort naturel et intelligent que vous l'ayez fait. L'extrême différence d'âge qu'il y a entre nous me permet de reconnaître sans ridicule, que cette p r é s e n t a t i o n , ces c a u s e r i e s , cette vague amorce de r e l a t i o n s étaient pour vous, ce n'est pas à moi de dire un honneur, mais enfin à tout le moins un avantage dont j e trouve que votre sottise fut non point de l'avoir divulgué, mais de n'avoir pas su le conserver." (G. II, p. 217.)

After this crushing lesson, Charlus makes Marcel mysterious reproaches, the explanation of which the young man was only to find later when he knew something of the Baron's erotic abnormalities. Having timidly assured Charlus that he had never intended to offend him, he is silenced by an astonishing outburst: "Pensez-vous qu'il soit à votre portée de m'offenser? Vous ne savez donc pas à qui vous parlez? Croyez-vous que la salive envenimée de cinq cents petits bonshommes de vos amis juchés les uns sur les autres arriverait à baver seulement jusqu'à mes augustes o r t e i l s ? " (G. II, p. 219.)

Might not these be the accents of a Richmond Roy whose delusions of grandeur were intoxicated not by highly questionable suppositions, but by an authentic genealogy giving him royal blood? — The tinge of madness in such outbursts is given more definite form when we find Charlus at a later point making confidences to Marcel that suggest that he wa6 convinced of having personal relations to the divinity and of being something like the Archangel Raphael (S. G. I l l , pp. 159, 160). These exaggerations of his folly were, we must suppose, more or less hidden from his relations in society or it would be hard to understand that he was not treated as a madman. But in his conversation in the world there was, as soon as he spoke of matters of genealogy, an extravagance that gave him everywhere the reputation of an "original". The violence of his disdain for the nobility of the Empire is a case in point. Marcel had spoken of the Princesse d'Iéna: " A h ! monsieur, vous faites allusion ici à un ordre de nomenclature où j e n'ai rien à voir. II y a peut-être une aristocratie chez les Tahitiens, mais j'avoue que je ne la connais pas. L e nom que vous venez de prononcer, c'est étrange, a cependant résonné, il y a quelques jours, à mes oreilles. . . . Comme il n'existe pas de princesse de ce nom, j'ai supposé qu'il s'agissait d'une pauvresse couchant sous le pont d'Iéna et qui avait pris pittoresquement le titre de princesse d'Iéna, comme on dit la Panthère des Batignolles ou le Roi de l'Acier. Mais non, il s'agissait d'une personne riche dont j'avais admiré à une exposition des meubles fort beaux et qui ont sur le nom du propriétaire la supériorité de ne pas être faux . . . C'est l'Empereur, paraît-il, qui s'est amusé à donner à ces gens un titre précisément indisponible." (G. II, p. 224.)

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From the apparent i n t e n t i o n a l n e s s of much of what in the Baron's attitude was startling to the ordinary observer we sense more than a touch of the d a n d y in him. It is significant that the man who is universally admitted to have served as Proust's model for the Baron de Charlus, Count Robert de Montesquiou, an aristocrat and aesthete who was well known in fashionable and literary circles of the time, was drawn by Huysmans in A Rebours as an aesthetic dandy of the fin-de-siècle style. The supreme snobbery of the Baron de Charlus thus grows out of a curious combination of conscious and unconscious elements — on the one side a megalomania that approached real madness, as we have seen, and on the other a highly conscious cult of aesthetic aristocratism. Proust calls Charlus the poet of the society of his time. The glamour attaching to certain names, by reason of historical and literary associations, which had been felt by the young Marcel as long as he did not know the persons bearing those names, is savoured by the Baron even after years of acquaintance with their bearers. Proust prefers this attitude to that of most of the other aristocrats he knew, who were insensible to the poetry of their own genealogies, but recognizes its fallaciousness when it is permitted to falsify one's human judgments. A quelques femmes de grande beauté et de rare culture dont les aïeules avaient été deux siècles plus tôt mêlées à toute la gloire et a toute l'élégance de l'ancien régime, il trouvait une distinction qui le faisait pouvoir se plaire seulement avec elles et sans doute l'admiration qu'il leur avait vouée était sincère, mais de nombreuses réminiscences d'histoire et d'art évoquées par leurs noms y entraient pour une grande part, comme des souvenirs de l'antiquité sont une des raisons du plaisir qu'un lettré trouve à lire une ode d'Horace peut-être inférieure à des poèmes de nos jours qui laisseraient ce même lettré indifférent. . . . M. de Charlus se félicitait qu'un préjugé analogue au sien en empêchant ces quelques grandes dames de frayer avec des femmes d'un sang moins pur, les offrît à son culte intactes, dans leur noblesse inaltérée, comme telle façade du XVIII« siècle soutenue par ses colpnnes plates de marbre rose et à laquelle les temps nouveaux n'ont rien changé. M. de Charlus célébrait la véritable n o b l e s s e d'esprit et de coeur de ces femmes, jouant ainsi sur le mot par une équivoque qui le trompait lui-même et où résidait le mensonge de cette conception bâtarde, de cet ambigu d'aristocratie, de générosité et d'art, mais aussi sa séduction. (J. F. II, 216, 217.)

The end of the Baron's career is tragic in the mediaeval sense of tragedy as the story "of him that stood in greet prosperitee and is y-falien out of heigh degree into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly". His position in the world is gradually shattered, for various reasons — his pro-Germanism during the war, for one thing — but chiefly by his growing taste for associating with his "inferiors", one of the results of his erotic abnormality. Proust paints the triumph over his aristocratic exclusiveness of this "snobisme de la canaille". Sans doute le snobisme de la canaille peut aussi bien se comprendre que l'autre. Ils avaient d'ailleurs été longtemps unis, alternant l'un avec l'autre, chez M. de Charlus qui ne trouvait personne d'assez élégant pour ses relations mondaines ni

188

de frisant assez l'apache pour les autres . . . Mais enfin l'équilibre entre ces deux snobismes avait été rompu. Peut-être fatigue de vieillard ou extension de la sensualité aux relations les plus banales, le Baron ne vivait plus qu'avec des "inférieurs". (T. R. I, p. 186.)

Proust recalls in this connection the great noblemen who are shown in Saint-Simon's memoirs living exclusively with their lackeys. The last we see of Charlus is the scene where, white-haired, broken by illness and age, almost childish, he is seen by Marcel humbly saluting a woman whom he had always treated with the utmost coldness and disdain. " L a mise à nu des gisements argentés de la chevelure décelait un changement moins profond que cette inconsciente humilité mondaine qui intervertissait tous les rapports sociaux, humiliait devant Mme. de SainteEuverte, eût humilié, — en montrant ce qu'il a de fragile — devant la dernière des Américaines (qui eût pu enfin s'offrir la politesse jusque-là inaccessible pour elle du baron) le snobisme qui semblait le plus fier" (T. R. I, p. 228). In spite of Proust's criticism of the aesthetic theories of M. de Charlus, he looks on him as infinitely superior to the average member of the society that now turns against him, without ever having sensed his intellectual value. En fait, les gens du monde étaient ingrats, car M. de Charlus était en quelque sorte leur poète, celui qui avait su dégager dans la mondanité ambiante une sorte de poésie où il entrait de l'histoire, de la beauté, du pittoresque, du comique, de la frivole élégance. Mais les gens du monde, incapables de comprendre cette poésie, n'en voyant aucune dans leur vie, la cherchaient ailleurs et mettaient à mille pieds au-dessus de M. de Charlus des hommes qui lui étaient infiniment inférieurs. . . . Bref, les gens du monde s'étaient désengoués de M. de Charlus, non pas pour avoir trop pénétré, mais sans avoir pénétré jamais sa rare valeur intellectuelle. (T. R. I, pp. 99, 100.)

Hypocritical Snobbery. If in the Baron de Charlus and in the hero of his novel Proust shows how snobbery can grow out of an overdevelopment of poetic imagination, he was far from looking on this as the only source of the malady, as is shown by the fact that precisely those members of the aristocracy whom he accuses of lacking the sense for the poetry of their names and traditions are exposed as peculiarly susceptible to snobbery. As most of these people affected a great indifference to titles and class distinctions, the discussion of their snobbery is given a strongly ironic character by the simple juxtaposition of their principles and their actions. M. de Charlus differed from his associates not in being a snob but in admitting it. Perhaps the most conspicuous difference between Proust's portrayal of snobbery and that of Meredith and Thackeray is the predominance of hypocritical snobbery, snobbery with a bad conscience — a difference chiefly explained by the later period at which he is writing, and perhaps also, although certainly to a lesser extent, by the difference in nationality. 189

The Guermantes, with the exception of the one branch of the famiíy headed by Prince Gilbert de Guermantes, "affectait de ne faire aucun cas de la noblesse". They set intelligence above everything, dallied with socialism and expected of every man, however rich and noble, that he should have a career. These ideas were not consciously insincere, and the strange fact that the servants of the Guermantes were trained to great exactitude in addressing their masters with the correct titles which they cared nothing about, and that whenever a Guermantes was married it was inevitably to the most brilliant "parti" of the season, can only be explained by Proust as the result of a mysterious "génie de la famille" that permitted the Guermantes to act with the greatest worldly prudence, in some sort u n c o n s c i o u s l y , while honestly believing in quite opposite ideals. The self-deception involved in such an attitude is sometimes revealed by Proust by a sudden flash of malice — the Duchesse de Guermantes has heard that the brother of a king is to be present at a dinner-party: "A cette nouvelle les traits de la duchesse respirèrent le contentement et ses paroles l'ennui. 'Ah! mon Dieu, encore des princes'" (G. II, p. 243) —, at other times by half-serious analyses of the complicated mental processes by which the "génie de la famille" disposed of the democratic principles. Quand la duchesse disait d'une femme, il paraît qu'elle est "charmante", ou d'un homme qu'il était tout ce qu'il y a de plus intelligent, elle ne croyait pas avoir d'autres raisons de consentir à les recevoir que ce charme ou cette intelligence, le génie des Guermantes n'intervenant pas à cette dernière minute: plus profond, situé à l'entrée obscure de la region où les Guermantes jugeaient, ce génie vigilant empêchait les Guermantes de trouver l'homme intelligent ou de trouver la femme charmante s'ils n'avaient pas de valeur mondaine, actuelle ou future. L'homme était déclaré savant, mais comme un dictionnaire, ou au contraire commun avec un esprit de commis voyageur, la femme jolie avait un genre terrible, ou parlait trop. (G. II, p. 128.)

In the same way, for a "Highness" who had an "entrée de faveur" into the duchess's salon even if not living up to the standard of wit and intelligence required of ordinary mortals, the same ingenuity was employed : "Avec la naïveté des gens du monde, du moment qu'on la recevait, on s'ingéniait à la trouver agréable, faute de pouvoir se dire que c'est parce qu'on l'avait trouvée agréable qu'on la recevait" (J. F. I, p. 120). Proust presents the mathematical formula for entry into this salon: Si le coefficient nécessaire d'intelligence et de charme allait en s'abaissant au f u r et à mesure que s'élevait le rang de la personne qui désirait être invitée chez la duchesse de Guermantes, jusqu'à approcher de zéro quand il s'agissait des principales têtes couronnées, en revanche plus on descendait au-dessous de ce niveau royal, plus le coefficient s'élevait. (G. II, p. 129.)

In spite of everything, this respect, even if limited, paid to intelligence and taste was what distinguished the Guermantes from most of the other circles in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 190

Il y avait chez les Guermantes, à l'encontre des trois quarts des milieux mondains, du goût, un goût raffiné même, mais aussi du snobisme, d'où possibilité d'une interruption momentanée dans l'exercice du goût. ( J . F. I, p. 120.)

But what was merely an interruption with the Guermantes was the rule in other circles. The Courvoisiers, for instance, another highly distinguished family allied to the Guermantes by marriage, were repelled rather than attracted by intelligence — for them "pour peu qu'on ne fût pas de leur monde, être intelligent n'était pas loin de signifier 'avoir probablement assassiné père et mère' " (G. II, p. 120). The rigour with which the Guermantes judged of snobbery in others was of the same relative nature as their judgment of charm and intelligence in nobles and roturiers. It was an accusation they were generous of when it could serve as an excuse for not inviting someone who was intelligent but lacking in worldly prestige — " Q u e l l e horreur, c'est un snob". But with their own friends they were more charitable, letting themselves be guided more by words than by actions, in the hope doubtless that the same credulity would be extended to themselves. Hannibal de Bréauté thus retained for many years the reputation of not caring for society, while taking care to associate exclusively with the most elevated circles, by assuring separately each duchess he visited that it was only because of her wit and beauty that he sought her out, a thing they were easily persuaded of, and by loudly proclaiming his contempt for and aversion to snobs. The people he called snobs were those who had as yet no position and who could thus have injured his own situation — "sa haine des snobs découlait de son snobisme, mais faisait croire aux naïfs, c'est-à-dire à tout le monde, qu'il en était exempt" (G. II, p. 173). Hypocritical snobbery is not only found among the nobility. The most acute case of this kind of self-deception is found in Legrandin, the neighbour of Marcel's family in Combray. An engineer, highly successful in his profession, and a man of letters on the side, Legrandin made the impression of a very superior character who was wholly above worldliness, especially since he seized every occasion of expressing his violent aversion to snobbery, "certainement le péché auquel pense Saint Paul quand il parle du péché pour lequel il n'y a pas de rémission" (S., I, p. 101). The only person who suspected the true state of affairs was Marcel's grandmother, who, with her sane and healthy spirit, totally lacking in snobbery herself, found it strange that a man who was so indifferent to the world should find it necessary to make such flaming tirades against the love of it. But Legrandin continued to enjoy the reputation of a man who loved in life, as he said, only a few old churches, moonlight and youth, until one day he was observed paying the most servile attentions to a great lady of the neighbourhood and going to the utmost lengths to avoid having to speak to his old friends while in such high company; from that time on what had been hidden from his neighbours — that he was a snob of almost pathological proportions — became so evident that they marvelled at their earlier blindness. 191

Legrandin's snobbery is analysed by Proust with an almost cruel penetration of the comedy of deception he played for himself and others. When Legrandin was asked if he knew the Guermantes his answer was so emphatic: "Non, je ne les connais pas, je n'ai jamais voulu, j ' a i toujours tenu à sauvegarder mon indépendance; au fond je suis une tête jacobine, vous le savez", that he himself was conscious of having betrayed himself. Si je demandais: "Connaissez-vous les Guermantes?", Legrandin le causeur répondait: "Non je n'ai jamais voulu les connaître." Malheureusement il ne le répondait qu'en second, car un autre Legrandin qu'il cachait soigneusement au fond de lui, qu'il ne montrait pas, parce que ce Legrandin-là savait sur le nôtre, sur son snobisme, des histoires compromettantes, un autre Legrandin avait déjà répondu par la blessure du regard, par le rictus de la bouche, par la gravité excessive du ton de la réponse, par les mille flèches dont notre Legrandin s'était trouvé en un instant lardé et alangui, comme un saint Sébastien du snobisme: "Hélas! que vous me faites mal, non je ne connais pas les Guermantes, ne réveillez pas la grande douleur de ma vie." (S., I, p. 187.)

The Saint Sebastian of snobbery is made to suffer new tortures when Marcel's parents, who wish to send the boy to Balbec for his health, ask Legrandin whether he knows anyone there. Legrandin's sister, brilliantly married, lives at Balbec, but he would rather be drawn and quartered than have to introduce his simple Combray neighbours to her. The description of his desperate evasions is highly comic. At first he pretends not to hear the question, then, when it is repeated, takes refuge in a poetic description of the beauties of the sea at Balbec, and finally, when Marcel's parents still insist, pleads with them not to go to Balbec at all because of the dangerous influence its melancholy beauty might'have on a young boy of a nervous disposition, reaching such heights of lyric eloquence that his friends are, as he had hoped, reduced to silence without having had an answer to their question. The process by which Legrandin concealed his snobbery from himself was similar to that employed by the Guermantes. Cela ne veut pas dire que M. Legrandin ne fût pas sincère quand il tonnait contre les 6nobs. Il ne pouvait pas savoir, au moins par lui-même, qu'il le fût, puisque nous ne connaissons jamais que les passions des autres, et que ce que nous arrivons à savoir des nôtres, ce n'est pas d'eux que nous avons pu l'apprendre. Sur nous, elles n'agissent que d'une façon seconde, par l'imagination qui substitue aux premiers mobiles, des mobiles de relais qui sont plus décents. Jamais le snobisme de Legrandin ne lui conseillait d'aller voir souvent une duchesse. Il chargeait l'imagination de Legrandin de lui faire apparaître cette duchesse comme parée de toutes les grâces. Legrandin se rapprochait de la duchesse, s'estimant de céder à cet attrait de l'esprit et de la vertu qu'ignorent les infâmes snobs. (S., I, p. 188.)

In later years M. Legrandin took the name of Legrandin de Méséglise, and soon thereafter appropriated the title of Comte de Méséglise. It is to be regretted that Proust merely records these final steps in his snobbery without attempting to describe the complicated mental processes to which this lover of old churches and moonlight must have taken recourse in order to justify himself in the strange decision to assume a false title. 192

L e g r a n d i n ' s snobbery ran in the family. E q u a l l y as great a contrast as between his poetic sensibility and his worldly ambition is that between his sister's high intellectuality and her " s n o b i s m e congénital et m o r b i d e " (S. G. II, p. 184). Having discovered that the Cambremers, the noble f a m i l y into which she h a d married, were not, as she h a d thought, members of the very most exclusive society to which she aspired, she finds it necessary to take u p the struggle again after her marriage — a struggle given special urgence by the fact that she is ill and thinks she may not live to reach her s u p r e m e aim of being received by the Guermantes. All her passion f o r modern music and peasant-dramas and philosophy is ineffective to m a k e her indifferent to these baser ambitions. " N e quittant la lecture de Stuart Mill que pour celle de Lachelier, au f u r et à mesure qu'elle croyait moins à la réalité du m o n d e extérieur, elle mettait plus d'acharnement à chercher à s'y faire, avant de mourir, une bonne position" (S. G. II, p. 184). A k i n to the hypocrisy of so many of Proust's snobs is their tendency to see snobs everywhere. F o r Proust this is just an e x a m p l e of the law that h u m a n beings have especially good eyes for their own faults in other people. Il semble que notre attention toujours attirée sur ce qui nous caractérise le remarque plus que toute autre chose chez les autres. Un myope dit d'un autre: " M a i s il peut à peine ouvrir les y e u x " ; . . . un malpropre ne parle que des bains que les autres ne prennent p a s ; un mari trompé voit partout des maris trompés; une femme légère des femmes légères; le snob des snobs. ( J . F. II, p. 197.)

Marcel's friend Bloch is a conspicuous e x a m p l e of this h u m a n tendency. E x t r e m e l y ambitious, but at first not very successful in penetrating into aristocratic circles, he sees Marcel's friendship with Saint-Loup as merely inspired by snobbery, and being morbidly tactless does not conceal his opinion. "Est-ce par goût de t'élever vers la noblesse — une noblesse très à côté du reste, mais tu es resté naïf" (the naïveté was of course Bloch's in this case) "— que tu fréquentes de Saint-Loup-en-Bray ? Tu dois être en train de traverser une jolie crise de snobisme. Dis-moi es-tu snob? Oui n'est-ce p a s ? " ( J . F. II, p. 193.)

Bloch's social maladroitness, of which the above is only one of the many e x a m p l e s given by Proust, has the excuse that he was doubly weighed down by the pressure of the Christian circles in which he was not accepted and of the even more ruthless snobbery of the Jewish castes superior to him. — Bloch's p l a c e in this novel has, incidentally, curious As in the case of analogies to that of J a c k R a i k e s in Evan Harrington. J a c k , his career is a sort of grotesque double of that of the hero. When as an older m a n Marcel returns to society (Temps Retrouvé) and sees Bloch admitted into the circles that seemed so f a r f r o m him in his youth, he is brought to realize that the admission of an unknown young bourgeois into the F a u b o u r g Saint-Germain, which seemed so miraculous in his own case, is by no means an isolated phenomenon. L i k e Raikes, Bloch 193

m a k e s in the beginning all the gaffes that the greater flexibility and adaptability of Evan and Marcel had saved them from. T h e resemblance between Bloch and Raikes extends even to their habit of expressing themselves in a kind of burlesquely Homeric rhetoric. Antisnobbery. Side by side with hypocritical snobbery there is quite naturally a great deal of antisnobbery in Proust's chronicle. It is a subject t h a t he was well fitted to analyse by his keen eye for the m a n i f o l d disguises taken on by h u m a n amour-propre, and for the discrepancies between what p e o p l e say, and convince themselves they really think, and what subconsciously they are actually feeling. Proust keeps us so continually reminded that antisnobbery is only a disguise for baffled snobbery that the dividing line between his hypocritical snobs and his antisnobs is not very sharp, but we m a y probably properly include in the latter class the people who are not content with pretending to be indifferent to social rank but go so f a r as to pretend to consider the aristocracy really inferior to the other classes. T h e person who has the most loudly proclaimed antisnobbery in the book, and the one who for the longest time persuaded herself and her friends that she h a d a p r o f o u n d contempt for the aristocracy and society, is M a d a m e Verdurin, the hostess whose intellectual and artistic salon was of such importance in the life of Swann and of Monsieur de Charlus. T o become a m e m b e r of her little " c l a n " one condition was necessary: one h a d to become a tacit adherent to the credo that all the p e o p l e of brilliant social position who did not come to Mme. Verdurin's Wednesdays were " d e s ennuyeux". Mme. Verdurin h a d real taste and artistic sense, which caused her to m a k e discoveries of talent such as the average "lion-huntress" never achieved, and she was genuinely devoted to her little " n o y a u " , but this perpetual, unavowed concern with the socially more brilliant circles that were as yet closed to her m a d e her live in a curious world of transparent fictions. About the Duchesse de Guermantes and other distinguished ladies who threatened to draw from her some of the f a i t h f u l , she did not hesitate to invent stories showing them as little better than demimondaines with false titles, who h a d to pay people to visit them. T h e necessity she felt of having these self-imposed illusions reinforced caused her to accept the crudest hypocrisy as long as it fitted her favourite fiction. D e Forcheville, who was a snob of the first water, played u p to her little m a n i a by seconding all her outbursts against the aristocracy, and was declared by her to be delightful, whereas Charles Swann, who cared infinitely less for great relations than de Forcheville and was, through his love for Odette, sincerely devoted to the Verdurins, aroused her wrath and scorn by having the good taste to defend his friends in society f r o m some of her cruder inventions. Of Swann she said, when he h a d definitely fallen into disgrace, " I I m ' a s s o m m a i t " , and Proust adds in parenthesis, " T r a d u c t i o n : 194

il allait chez les La Trémoïlle et les G u e r m a n t e s et savait que j e n'y allais pas" (S. G. III, p. 19). Especially elaborate fictions h a d to be contrived whenever by way of exception, one of t h e " e n n u y e u x " desired and received admittance to t h e salon. W h e n Mme. V e r d u r i n invited t h e Marquis and Marquise de C a m b r e m e r , her landlords, to dinner, she p r e t e n d e d to be forced to it much against h e r will and to do it only to get m o r e favourable terms for the horse she rented f r o m t h e m . W i t h t h e Princesse Sherbatofï, a lady who f o r some obscure reason was not received in the best society, and who became one of the most zealous of t h e f a i t h f u l , the Verdurins cooperated in a double fiction t h a t was equally satisfactory f o r b o t h sides. A leurs yeux, la princesse, trop supérieure à son milieu d'origine pour ne pas s'y ennuyer, entre tant de gens qu'elle eût pu fréquenter, ne trouvait agréables que les seuls Verdurin, et réciproquement ceux-ci, sourds aux avances de toute l'aristocratie qui s'offrait à eux, n'avaient consenti à faire qu'une seule exception, en faveur d'une grande dame plus intelligente que ses pareilles, la princesse Sherbatoff. (S. G. II, p. 122.)

I n t h e course of time, and with the help of the war, which m a d e and u n m a d e so many worldly reputations, Mme. V e r d u r i n became one of t h e most sought a f t e r hostesses in Paris. H e r antisnobbery melted away with astonishing rapidity and with it the n u m b e r of t h e "ennuyeux". Par une sorte de transformation magique, tout ennuyeux qui était venu lui faire une visite et avait sollicité une invitation devenait subitement quelqu'un d'agréable, d'intelligent. Bref, au bout d'un an le nombre des ennuyeux était réduit dans une proportion tellement forte, que la "peur et l'impossibilité de s'ennuyer" qui avait tenu une si grande place dans la conversation et joué un si grand rôle dans la vie de Mme. Verdurin, avait presque entièrement disparu. (T. R. I, p. 54.)

One of t h e most interesting of Proust's character studies, b o t h as concerns snobbery and m o r e general characteristics, is t h a t of Françoise, t h e old servant who plays such an i m p o r t a n t p a r t in Marcel's life. This interesting personage, in w h o m Proust has described with much h u m o u r t h e combination of a genuine and rare loyalty to h e r masters with an extreme ingenuity in saying and doing things which she knows will, without giving any grounds f o r definite complaint against her, b e peculiarly disagreeable to them, has in her character a composite of the psychology of t h e peasant and of t h e servant. H e r a t t i t u d e toward t h e nobility, one of distrust and resentment, which P r o u s t contrasts with t h a t of Aimé, t h e m a î t r e d'hôtel in Balbec, derives f r o m h e r peasant birth. Il suffisait qu'on prononçât le nom d'une personne titrée pour qu'Aimé parût heureux, au contraire de Françoise, devant qui on ne pouvait dire "le comte Un tel" sans que son visage s'assombrit et que sa parole devînt sèche et brève. . . . Il est, d'ailleurs, à croire que pour que même de notre bouche à nous, qu'elle appelait si humblement ses maîtres et qui l'avions presque si entièrement domptée, elle ne pût entendre, sans avoir à réprimer un mouvement de colère, le nom d'un noble, il fallait que la famille dont elle était sortie, occupât dans son village

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une situation aisée, indépendante, et qui ne devait être troublée dans la considération dont elle jouissait que par ces mêmes nobles chez lesquelles au contraire, dès l'enfance, un Aimé a servi comme domestique s'il n'y a pas été élevé par charité. (J. F. II, p. 132.)

Side by side with this peasant pride, she has, however, a great deal of the servant's vicarious snobbery. Her own personal vanities, such as her dislike of being called "cuisinière" and her fondness for the young valet de pied who always referred to her as the "gouvernante", are of less importance to her in general than the prestige of her employers. Françoise vivait avec nous en symbiose; c'est nous qui, avec nos vertus, notre fortune, notre train de vie, notre situation, devions nous charger d'élaborer les petites satisfactions d'amour-propre dont était formée . . . la part de contentement indispensable à sa vie. (G. I, p. 18.)

She is secretly much distressed at the simplicity of the style in which her employers live, and does her best to let it be known discreetly that they could permit themselves untold luxuries if they only wished. Jupien, the waistcoat maker, wins her heart completely by his comprehension of this fact and by saying, for instance, when they see the fine carriage and horses of a neighbour, "Vous aussi vous pourriez en avoir si vous vouliez et même peut-être plus qu'eux, mais vous n'aimez pas tout cela" (G. I, p. 18) — the "vous" referring, of course, to her employers. The only way in which a noble can make her forgive him his title is by being attentive to Marcel or his parents, as in the case of Mme. de Villeparisis, whom at first she had regarded with suspicion, but whose extreme amiability gradually mollified her. Then, indeed, she prefers the noble to all their other friends, quite naturally, according to Proust, who sees in her airs of hostility to the nobility a sign that she cherished them not less, but more, than people like Aimé (J. F. II, p. 131). Françoise's "antisnobbery" is rather different from that of Mme. Verdurin. It is, in spite of being, as we have seen, mixed with quite opposite tendencies, more genuine, more spontaneous. In both cases the basis of the dislike of the nobility is the same — the unavowed envy of a greater prestige than one's own — but in Mme. Verdurin's case this natural impulse is complicated by the self-consciousness of a more educated person who fears being suspected of snobbery, so that her tirades against the "ennuyeux" fit almost as well into the category of "hypocritical snobbery" as of antisnobbery. With Françoise there is no hypocrisy: the conflict in her feelings is the primitive conflict between the admiration and resentment aroused in us by the possessors of a prestige we do not share in. In Albertine, the young girl whom Marcel loved, there is also something of this primitive hostility towards the aristocracy. Quand j'avais dit à Albertine, à notre arrivée de Balbec, que la duchesse de Guermantes habitait en face de nous, dans le même hôtel, elle avait pris, en entendant le grand titre et le grand nom, cet air plus qu'indifférent, hostile, méprisant, qui est le signe du désir impuissant chez les natures fières et pas-

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sionnées. Celle d'Albertine avait beau être magnifique, les qualités qu'elle recélait n e pouvaient se développer qu'au milieu de ces entraves que sont nos goûts, ou ce deuil de ceux de nos goûts auxquels nous avons été obligés de renoncer — comme p o u r Albertine le snobisme — et qu'on appelle des haines. Celle d'Albertine pour les gens du m o n d e tenait du reste très peu de place en elle et me plaisait p a r un côté esprit de révolution — c'est-à-dire a m o u r m a l h e u r e u x de la noblesse — inscrit sur la face opposée du caractère français où est le genre aristocratique de Mme. de Guermantes 1 1 7 . (P. II, pp. 41, 42.)

Albertine is one of the very few "antisnobs" in the book who do not in the course of time reveal themselves as snobs — possibly because of the strength of her sensual impulses, which left little room for the comparatively artificial urge of snobbery (Proust remarks elsewhere that Legrandin in his old age was almost cured of snobbery by the growing power his "more natural vice" had on him — [A. D. II, p. 175]). Most of the cases of antisnobbery described by Proust are taken from the bourgeoisie, or from the classes below it. Among the nobles there is one, however, Robert de Saint-Loup, whose conscientious efforts to be democratic lead him into a prejudice against his own class that could perhaps be given this name. S'il y avait une classe contre laquelle il eût de la prévention et de la partialité, c'était l'aristocratie, et jusqu'à croire aussi difficilement à la supériorité d'un h o m m e du monde, qu'il croyait facilement à celle d'un h o m m e du peuple. (J. F. III, p. 24.)

This voluntary renunciation of the pride of position springs, of course, from quite different sources from those of the antisnobbery of the middle classes, and in a man like Saint-Loup, who had so many of the attractions of the man of noble race, has a certain grace that Proust recognizes. It is, as he says, "tout le contraire de l'orgueil plébéien" (J. F. II, p. 207). Proust seems to have been in doubt whether this attitude, which involved the neglect of a number of traditional values that he admired, was or was not preferable to that of M. de Charlus. Si les efforts de sincérité et d'émancipation de Saint-Loup ne pouvaient être trouvés q u e très nobles, à juger par le résultat extérieur, il était permis de se féliciter qu'ils eussent fait défaut chez M. de Charlus, lequel avait fait transporter chez lui une grande partie des admirables boiseries de l'hôtel Guermantes au lieu de les échanger c o m m e son neveu [Saint-Loup] contre un mobilier modernstyle. (J. F. II, p. 216.)

He refrains from expressing a final judgment, and merely says that between these two kinds of men "le débat reste ouvert".

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The implication that this " a m o u r malheureux de la noblesse" is a typical French characteristic has not passed without contradiction. Seillière, who thinks that Proust is here generalizing his own case beyond measure, says: "C'est contestable, à moins qu'on ne désigne par là cette volonté de puissance qui appartient aux Français comme à tous les h u m a i n s , mais qui ne prend pas spécialement chez eux la f o r m e nobiliaire." (p. 90.)

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Intermittent snobbery. Snobbery was not something absolute for Proust. It would almost seem that he considered it more dependent on circumstances than on character. He shows many of his characters as snobs at one moment and not at others — not merely, like Mme. Verdurin, deceiving themselves by an antisnobbery that betrays their real snobbery, but genuinely free of it. It is true that there are a few rare persons of superior character whom he seems to consider above snobbery under all circumstances — Marcel's grandmother, for instance, who was equally free from snobbery in its direct and inverted forms, as many of Proust's remarks testify: "Pour elle, la distinction était quelque chose d'absolument indépendant du rang social" (S. I, p. 35); she disapproved of Charlus' aristocratic prejudices, he tells us, "mais sans rien de cette sévérité où entrent d'habitude une secrète envie et l'irritation de voir un autre se réjouir d'avantages qu'on voudrait et qu'on ne peut posséder" (J. F. II, p. 215). But for average humanity Proust seems to see the tendency to snobbery in varying degrees of severity as almost universal and as only waiting for favourable circumstances to reveal itself. A person who seems for a long time to be free of snobbery is Charles Swann, the subtle connoisseur of art whose extraordinary culture and charm give him an unusual position of esteem in the Faubourg SaintGermain. Proust says expressly that Swann is not a snob (S. II, p. 52), when we first make his acquaintance, that his judgments of persons were quite independent of questions of rank. Il avait la même considération — à un degré d'identité qu'ils n'auraient pu croire — pour des petits bourgeois qui faisaient danser au cinquième étage d'un escalier D, palier à gauche, que pour la princesse de Parme qui donnait les plus belles fêtes de Paris. (S. II, p. 78.)

Swann is, at this stage of his career, very close to what we have spoken of as the pure type of the "man of the world". His taste for society, which is strong enough to make him neglect the literary work that he feels to be his real vocation, is a genuine taste for luxury and for the special atmosphere of a certain worldly culture, of which Proust has so well analysed the charm and the limitations. "L'habitude qu'il avait eue longtemps du monde, du luxe, lui en avait donné en même temps que le dédain, le besoin" (S. II, p. 78). His extraordinary social connections are valued by him as such only for the utility they have for him in his amorous adventures in that they can put him in a favourable light with some woman, usually of mediocre origin, who might otherwise pay no attention to him (S., I, p. 276). This sceptical indifference to social prestige was, however, apparently not always Swann's attitude, as Proust gives us to understand when he speaks of the "sentiment de vanité dont il était maintenant exempt ( b i e n q u e ce f û t l u i s a n s d o u t e q u i a u t r e f o i s l ' a v a i t d i » 198

r i g é v e r s c e t t e c a r r i è r e m o n d a i n e où il a v a i t gaspillé dans les plaisirs frivoles les dons de son e s p r i t ) " . (S. I, p. 276.) And if Swann h a d once been something of a snob, he was also c a p a b l e of becoming one again, and does so after his marriage. Having pushed his indifference to what his fashionable friends may think to the extreme of marrying the demi-mondaine who had for years been his mistress, but whom he did not even love any longer, he develops, as her husband, a new and, according to the standards of his former friends, h u m b l e kind of snobbery that astonishes all who h a d known him before. T h e Swann who h a d shown an extreme delicacy and modesty when it was a question of his really brilliant relations (to the extent that his neighbours in Combray were for many years totally ignorant that he was a friend of the Prince of Wales and a favourite in the best houses of P a r i s ) now boasts of the c o m m o n p l a c e relations that his wife gradually gains in a fashion that is m o r e than p a i n f u l , even going so f a r as to save flattering letters and telegrams she has received to pass about among the p e o p l e he hopes to impress. Proust confesses that this last development m a k e s it look almost as if Swann's delicacy in his better days had only been a m o r e subtle kind of vanity, arid as if he h a d merely passed through the stages typical of the development of his race (he was a J e w ) " d e p u i s le snobisme le plus naïf et la plus grossière goujaterie, j u s q u ' à la plus fine politesse". B u t he prefers to this another explanation, which may b e quoted here as a very curious psychological theory: L a principale raison était que nos vertus elles-mêmes ne sont pas quelque chose de libre, de flottant, de quoi nous gardions la disponibilité permanente; elles finissent par s'associer si étroitement dans notre esprit avec les actions à l'occasion desquelles nous nous sommes faits un devoir de les exercer, que si surgit pour nous une activité d'un autre ordre, elle nous prend au dépourvu et sans que nous ayons seulement l'idée qu'elle pourrait comporter la mise en oeuvre de ces mêmes vertus. Swann empressé avec ces nouvelles relations et les citant avec fierté, était comme ces grands artistes modestes ou généreux qui, s'ils se mettent à la fin de leur vie à se mêler de cuisine ou de jardinage, étalent une satisfaction naïve des louanges qu'on donne à leurs plats ou à leurs plates-bandes pour lesquels ils n'admettent pas la critique qu'ils acceptent aisément s'il s'agit de leurs chefsd'oeuvre, ou bien qui, donnant une le leurs toiles pour rien, ne peuvent en revanche sans mauvaise humeur perdre quarante sous aux dominos. (J. F. I, pp. 8, 9.)

Swann's l i f e was thus divided into three epochs: snobbery, non-snobbery and snobbery again. Rather similar periods are shown in the l i f e of the M a r q u i s e de Villeparisis. Having achieved in her youth a great social position, she early becomes indifferent to it and deliberately flies in the f a c e of the prejudices of her aristocratic relatives. When, however, her worldly situation is definitely lost, through her lack of exclusiveness in her friendships, reinforced by her rather " f a s t " life, we see her suddenly attaching great importance to the relations she h a d been so indifferent to in her youth. Proust presents this as a very frequent situation. "Com199

bien de vies de femmes . . . ont été divisées ainsi en périodes contrastées, la dernière tout employée a reconquérir ce qui dans la deuxième avait été si gaiement jeté au vent" (G., I, p. 168). In the case of Mme. de Villeparisis Proust is, however, less certain than in Swann's case that the middle period was one of genuine indifference to social prestige: "qu'elle se fût employée aussi à défaire, avec une industrie persévérante et naturelle, la situation qu'elle tenait de sa grande naissance ne signifie d'ailleurs nullement que même à cette époque reculée, Mme. de Villeparisis n'attachât pas un grand prix à sa situation". Her recklessness grew rather out of over-confidence and an excess rather than a lack of pride. "Elle avait voulu montrer aux duchesses qu'elle était plus qu'elles, en disant, en faisant tout ce que celles-ci n'osaient pas dire, n'osaient pas faire." In Gilherte, Swann's daughter, we see the change from snobbery to the lack of it. Having, on the strength of her immense fortune and by very great efforts on her own part, become the Marquise de Saint-Loup and acquired a great position in the world, she soon becomes indifferent to society, lives in an almost complete retirement, and displays an attitude of ironic scorn towards the aristocracy. The position to achieve which she had sacrificed so much, even the memory of her father, who had adored her and whom she had loved — she went so far, "s'avilissant pour se rehausser", as Proust says, to suggest to people who she feared might think less of her because she was Swann's daughter, that she might have been the illegitimate child of some great person (A. D. II, p. 51) — is thus rapidly unmade by her lack of concern about upholding it, even the prestige attaching to the name of Marquise de Saint-Loup — and later, by her second marriage, Duchesse de Guermantes — not being proof against the depreciating influence of the very mixed company she entertains — for, Proust comments, "la valeur d'un titre de noblesse, aussi bien que de bourse, monte quand on le demande et baisse quand on l'offre" (A. D. II, p. 178). Even Legrandin, and more surprisingly still, his sister, lose the greater part of their snobbery when they have finally achieved the position they had been working for (A. D. II, pp. 175, 176). In Legrandin this change was influenced by other alterations in his character, as mentioned before, but it is in any case almost the rule that Proust's bourgeois snobs who are successful in their ambitions become indifferent to society in the end. Even Bloch ceases to be pushing and boastful when he is actually received in society, and — whether from an improvement in his manners or indifference is not made clear — makes no ostentation of the many invitations he receives from the duchesses he had formerly persecuted with his importunity. Snobbery and the general laws of human conduct. The appearance and disappearance of snobbery in the lives of Proust's characters follows in general the rule to which he gives especial 200

prominence in his study of love — put crudely, that a human being desires above all what is difficult for him to secure, but becomes indifferent to it as soon as he is sure of it. This truth, which is illustrated in the love of Swann for Odette, and in all the amours of Marcel, is of course nothing new, but is promulgated by Proust with a new and startling consistency. The parallels between the various stages in the lover's and the snob's feelings are indicated by him quite consciously: what interested him in the study of human conduct was precisely the discovery of these parallels that exist between seemingly different fields of human activity and feeling, those of the lover and the snob, the diplomatist and the fashionable hostess, the individual and the nation. He was, as a letter 1 1 8 of his to Louis de Robert testifies, in search of "laws" of human conduct, and he even goes so far as to think that such laws make observation superfluous. II est inutile d'observer les moeurs, puisqu'on peut les déduire des lois psychologiques. ( J . F. I, p. 1 1 9 " « . )

The most favourable condition for the growth of prestige is the illusion that the person or group in question is unattainable for us. The prestige attaching to the "petite bande" of young girls in Balbec that leads to Marcel's love of Albertine — Proust believes that "le désir vient toujours d'un prestige préalable" (A. D. I, p. 215) — comes from their air of sublime indifference to the rest of the world, their sufficiency unto themselves, that make the timid young boy believe that never under any circumstances would one of them take any interest in him. The same thing creates the huge prestige that the salon of the Duchesse de Guermantes has in his eyes, even after the name of Guermantes has lost much of the charm of its "syllabes dorées": J'avais beau savoir que le salon Guermantes ne pouvait pas présenter les particularités que j'avais extraites de ce nom, le fait qu'il m'avait été interdit d'y pénétrer, en m'obligeant à lui donner le même genre d'existence qu'aux salons dont nous avons lu la description dans un roman, ou vu l'image dans un rêve, me le faisait, même quand j'étais certain qu'il était pareil à tous les autres, imaginer tout différent; entre moi et lui il y avait la barrière où finit le réel. (G. II, p. 63.)

Similarly, he shows how a cousin of Mme. de Guermantes on the Courvoisier, or exclusive side, who was scandalized at the presence of a certain Countess G. at her cousin's house, took on an extreme importance in the latter lady's ideas by ignoring her for years. " L a persévérance de Mme. de Villebon à snober Mme. G. ne fut pas tout à fait inutile. Aux Quoted by Seillière, p. 284. Seillière makes the necessary réservations with respect to this "sentence fort discutable": " U n e fois qu'on est parvenu à poser solidement ces lois, faudrait-il ajouter. Mais, même avec ce correctif, il y aurait encore là un paradoxe, puisque ces lois auront été posées après observation ou expérience des moeurs et que l'observation continuée de celles-ci conduira seule à serrer de plus près encore la vérité psychologique, à perfectionner les lois de façon à prévoir les faits de façon plus assurée." (p. 81.) 118

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yeux de Mme. G. elle doua Mme. de Villebon d'un prestige tel, d'ailleurs purement imaginaire, que, quand la fille de Mme. G., qui était la plus j o l i e et la plus riche des bals de l'époque, fut à marier, on s'étonna de lui voir refuser tous les ducs. C'est que sa mère, se souvenant des avanies hebdomadaires qu'elle avait essuyées rue de Grenelle . . . , ne souhaitait véritablement qu'un mari pour sa fille: un fils Villebon" (G. II, p. 121). T h e loss of interest in society that Swann, Gilberte, and the Legrandins experience when they have attained the position so long striven for, is parallel to the almost complete indifference that Marcel confesses to feeling for Albertine when, holding her as " l a prisonnière" completely cut off from the rest of the world, he has for a time the illusion that h e can be wholly sure of h e r ; while the new access of snobbery suffered by Swann and Mme. Villeparisis when they are no longer received in society is comparable to the immediate resurrection of Marcel's love whenever his jealousy is aroused and he no longer feels sure of his possession. Similar reactions are observed by Proust in the aversion the Guermantes and their like have to any roturier who reveals his eagerness to know them, and, on the other hand, the prestige gained by those who appear indifferent to t h e m : " L e s gens du monde ont tellement l'habitude qu'on les recherche que qui les fuit leur semble un phénix et accapare leur attention", he says (G. I I , p. 64), and, definitely linking up the two fields in which he finds this truth exemplified, "L'horreur que les grands ont pour les snobs qui veulent à toute force se lier avec eux . . ., la femme l'a pour tout homme trop amoureux" (T. R. I, p. 172). A confirmation of this law is found by Marcel in considering his own success in Parisian society. I t was not until he had become indifferent towards Mme. de Guermantes that she suddenly became interested in him and began to invite him to her house, and many other experiences convince him that the true recipe for success in society is indifference, or the appearance of i t : " I l y aurait des parvenus, si on enseignait dans ce sens l'art de parvenir" (G. II, p. 61). From this law it would seem natural to expect that the people born to the highest social position would be free of snobbery, and, in spite of the many snobs that Proust draws in the aristocracy, he seems indeed to think of snobbery as rarer in the upper than in the middle regions of society. He speaks, for instance, of one of his characters as being "snob bien que duchesse" (P. II, p. 86), and says that the Princesse de Parme was "dépourvue de snobisme comme la plupart des véritables altesses" (G. I, p. 49). Another point of contact between Proust's analyses of snobbery and of love is his demonstration of the extreme subjectivity of both these human impulses. His long analysis of Swann's love for Odette and of Saint-Loup's for Rachel is a study in the power of a chance illusion that made of these women, who were in the eyes of other men just women of easy virtue whose favours were to b e had for money, something precious, something difficult to have and to keep, for whom they were willing to 202

sacrifice their lives and their careers. The snob has similar illusions, but the sensations they give him are just as authentic as the lover's. For Cottard and the other members of the "petit clan" the Princesse Sherbatoff had the prestige of a supremely high social position, whereas in the great world she was looked on as a déclassée. De nombreux Cottard qui ont cru passer leur vie au coeur du faubourg Saint Germain ont eu leur imagination peut-être plus enchantée de rêves féodaux, que ceux qui avaient effectivement vécu parmi des princes. (S. G. II, p. 127.)

The young Marcel makes similar mistakes, although in the opposite direction. The difference between Rachel as Marcel had known her and the Rachel Saint-Loup loved is no greater than that made by Marcel as a boy between Mme. de Guermantes und her cousin Mme. de Villeparisis, whom he had known as his grandmother's old school friend, and who had consequently so little prestige for him that he could not believe she was really related to the Guermantes. Comment aurais-je pu croire à une communauté d'origine entre deux noms qui étaient entrés en moi l'un par la porte basse et honteuse de l'expérience, l'autre par la porte d'or de l'imagination? (J. F. II, p. 135.)

Growing out of the subjectivity of snobbery is the great relativity of the conception of what constitutes worldly distinction. Proust never tires of noting with a kind of scientific interest the curious differences between the various classes in this respect. In Odette, Swann's mistress, he shows a conception of "chic" that was worlds apart from that of the Guermantes. With the cocotte's ignorance of the great world, she is almost indifferent to being introduced to Swann's great friends of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, whose names mean little to her, but attaches great importance to being seen in certain restaurants, to going to certain balls and expositions, which had nothing to do with the Guermantes's idea of elegance, because they were open to anyone who had enough money (J. F. I, p. 127). Proust also tries with some curiosity to penetrate into the feelings of the Simonets, for whom there was a huge difference between the Simonnets with two n's and those with one, and concludes that "l'aristocratie est une chose relative" (J. F. I l l , p. 52). And just as Swann does not care about changing his mistress's idea of smartness, "pensant que la sienne n'était pas plus vraie, était aussi sotte, dénuée d'importance" (S. II, p. 43), so Proust finds the orthographical subtleties of the Simonets not very different from the distinctions considered important by the aristocracy (J. F. I l l , p. 111). One of the most conspicuous points on which the classes differ is in the importance given to wealth. The bourgeoisie, which classes everyone according to his known income, has no idea, Proust remarks, of the great liberty reigning in this respect in the world of the Guermantes and their like, where a great fortune is considered desirable purely for practical reasons, not for any prestige attaching to it, and where poverty is looked on as "aussi désagréable, mais nullement plus diminuante et n'affectant 203

pas plus la situation sociale qu'une maladie d'estomac" (A. D. II, p. 134). But if the conceptions of aristocracy are based on different things, they are subject to much the same rules. Françoise, for instance, in whom both her peasant origin and her absorption of the ideas of the Combray bourgeoisie combine to create a very high respect for money, has a way of confusing wealth with virtue that is very similar to the Baron de Charlus's confusion of noble birth and nobility of soul. Si elle tenait tant d'ailleurs à ce que l'on . . . nous sût riches, ce n'est pas q u e la richesse sans plus, la richesses sans la vertu, fût aux yeux de Françoise le bien suprême, mais la vertu sans la richesse n'était pas non plus son idéal. La richesse était pour elle comme u n e condition nécessaire de la vertu, à défaut de laquelle la vertu serait sans mérite et sans charme. Elle les séparait si peu qu'elle avait fini par prêter a chacune les qualités de l'autre, à exiger quelque confortable dans la vertu, à reconnaître q u e l q u e chose d'édifiant dans la richesse. (G. I, p. 20.)

Similarly, the laws of intellectual snobbery as described by Proust follow the same lines as ordinary snobbery. For Mme. de CambremerLegrandin, whose intellectuality is of a purely imitative character, certain names in art and literature have the same prestige and unquestioned authority that the name Guermantes has for her in worldly matters. "Ah, vous avez été en Hollande", she says to Albertine, "Vous connaissez les Ver Meer?" — in the same tone, Proust comments, as she would have asked: "Vous connaissez les Guermantes?", for, he adds, "le snobisme en changeant d'objet ne change pas d'accent" (S. G. II, p. 24). H e could have carried the comparison farther and shown what a similarity there was between her efforts to convince herself and others that her judgments in art were really independent and the mental processes by which her brother convinced himself that he admired certain duchesses only because of their intrinsic merits, as the following amusing dialogue shows: Mme. de C a m b r e m e r : " A u nom du ciel, après un peintre c o m m e Monet, qui est tout b o n n e m e n t un génie, n'allez pas n o m m e r un vieux poncif sans talent comme Poussin. J e vous dirai tout n û m e n t que j e le trouve le p l u s barbifiant des raseurs . . . Monet, Degas, Manet, oui, voilà des p e i n t r e s ! " . . . Mais, lui dis-je, sentant que la seule m a n i è r e de réhabiliter Poussin aux yeux de Mme. de Cambremer c'était d ' a p p r e n d r e à celle-ci qu'il était redevenu à la mode, M. Degas assure qu'il ne connaît rien de p l u s beau q u e les Poussin de Chantilly". "Ouais? Je ne connais pas ceux de Chantilly, me dit Mme. de Cambremer, qui ne voulait pas être d'un autre avis q u e Degas, mais j e peux parler de ceux du Louvre q u i sont des horreurs". "Il les admire aussi énormément". "Il f a u d r a que j e les revoie. T o u t cela est u n peu ancien dans ma tête", répondit-elle après un instant de silence et comme si le jugement favorable qu'elle allait certainement bientôt porter sur Poussin devait dépendre, non de la nouvelle q u e j e venais de lui communiquer, mais de l'examen supplémentaire et cette fois définitif qu'elle comptait faire subir aux Poussin du Louvre pour avoir la faculté d e se déjuger. (S. G. II, p. 32.)

Mme. de Cambremer happens to be the only one of his characters to whom Proust expressly attributes "intellectual snobbery", but the intellectual pretensions of the greater part of his gens du monde (who have any at all) could almost equally well be termed such. 204

To r e t u r n to t h e changes f r o m snobbery to non-snobbery and vice versa t h a t P r o u s t shows in his characters: they are h o u n d u p with still another law and a more universal one, t h e Law of Change in general. To Proust t h e most conspicuous fact about h u m a n beings is t h a t they do not remain the same. T h e biological fact t h a t a h u m a n being has a new body every so many years is f o r h i m t r u e in t h e moral sphere too. T h e changes in a p p e a r a n c e of t h e people h e h a d k n o w n which Marcel notes on returning to the world a f t e r his long exile are f o r Proust only t h e outward expression of t h e fact t h a t they have actually become different people, with different desires, hates, loves, tastes. W h a t h e finds surprising is not t h a t t h e people h a v e changed b u t t h a t they are so astonished to find t h a t other people have changed. W h a t conceals t h e revolutionary effect of the years f r o m t h e people who undergo it is t h e almost u n l i m i t e d capacity of forgetting possessed by h u m a n beings. F o r Proust t h e r e is no crime so heinous, no scandal so sensational, n o love so intense, t h a t it cannot be forgotten in t h e course of comparatively few years. So t h e people we meet at t h e close of Proust's work are, b o t h in their characters and in t h e i r position in t h e world, quite new people. T h e subtle, supremely well-bred Swann becomes f a t u o u s and tactless, t h e vulgar Bloch becomes discreet and modest, Mme. Verdurin, t h e h a t e r of t h e ennuyeux, marries t h e P r i n c e de Guermantes and is t h e intimate f r i e n d of duchesses, Saint-Loup, the preux chevalier, makes his wife (Gilberte) miserably u n h a p p y , and appears in some scenes towards the end of t h e book in a positively a b j e c t light, women whose lives h a d been an open scandal to t h e past generation are looked on as saints by the new one. And whole groups change. T h e influence of t h e D r e y f u s case, which h a d turned m a n y of t h e firmest social constellations topsy-turvy, is completed by t h e war, which wipes away boundaries t h a t h a d once seemed unattackable. T h u s f o r t h e snobs of a new generation social prestige is connected with quite different names t h a n in Marcel's youth. T h e Duchesse de Guermantes, by h e r i n f a t u a t i o n f o r certain B o h e m i a n circles, loses t h e glamour of unapproachableness t h a t h a d m a d e h e r salon supreme, and on t h e other h a n d t h e salons of Odette and Mme. Verdurin (even b e f o r e her princely marriage) gradually attract t h e most brilliant society of t h e day. T h e older guests at the Guermantes matinée are bewildered at t h e new figures they meet in society, people of bourgeois origin and sometimes of scandalous r e p u t a t i o n , who, they protest, would never have been received in t h e i r day. Proust points out t h a t this is in great p a r t an illusion, since even in t h e i r day m a n y outsiders, like Swann a n d like himself, were received in society, b u t were not looked on as i n t r u d e r s because they already f o r m e d a p a r t of society w h e n these people entered it in t h e i r youth. But h e recognizes t h a t to a certain extent t h e sense of social hierarchy was actually being weakened. F o r in spite of t h e f a c t t h a t Proust looks on snobbery as one of t h e f u n d a m e n t a l impulses of h u m a n 205

nature (Swann, for instance, is almost pleased at the suggestion that Odette is attracted by his social position: "il n'aurait pas été très mécontent qu'on se la figurât tenant à lui, — qu'on les sentît unis l'un à l'autre — p a r q u e l q u e c h o s e d ' a u s s i f o r t q u e l e s n o b i s m e ou l'argent" — S. II, p. 75), he envisages the possibility that in this world of change snobbery itself might disappear. S i les p e r s o n n e s changent de situation, les i d é e s et les cinables ( d e m ê m e q u e les fortunes et les alliances p a y s ) changent aussi, p a r m i l e s q u e l l e s m ê m e s celles de chics. N o n s e u l e m e n t l e s n o b i s m e c h a n g e p o u r r a i t d i s p a r a î t r e c o m m e la g u e r r e

c o û t u m e s les plu9 indérade p a y s et les haines d e ne recevoir q u e d e s gens de forme, m a i s il même.

(T. R. II, p. 134.)

This remark is, appropriately enough, the last comment on snobbery in Proust's work. Proust and the aristocracy. The question of whether Proust was really impartial and objective in his portrayal of the aristocracy has been a matter of some discussion among his critics, and has more than once received an answer in the negative 1 2 0 . This accusation would, we may be sure, have distressed Proust more than any questions as to whether, as a young man entering the world, he could have been called snobbish. In his Marcel, in whom there is certainly a kind of snobbery, mixed of poetry and vanity, he has, in fact, practically confessed to not having been free of it in his youth (for whatever reservations he may have made as to the autobiographical nature of his book, he must have known that in this point everyone would look on it as a confession). But it is very evident that he believed that with the years he had outlived both the first unreasonable expectation that aristocrats would be creatures of a different world, and the equally unreasonable disappointment of his second period at finding them comparable to other mortals, and that he had in the end reached a stage where he could observe them with the same detachedness he brought to bear on any other human group. Absolute objective accuracy cannot, of course, be expected from any human observer of other human beings, and Proust, who excels in showing the different faces one person can show to different observers, would be the last to pretend to it. But if, without approaching the difficult question of whether his picture of the French aristocracy of his day is a faithful one, we examine the bases for his critics' assumption that he was less objective towards the aristocracy than towards other groups of society, we shall perhaps find that there has been a certain misunderstanding of just what Proust was trying to do. 1 2 0 As, f o r instance, in de L u p p é , Chez Marcel in Seillière, Marcel Proust, Sa vie, son oeuvre.

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Proust,

Snobs

el Mondains,

and

The complaint that Proust gives too much attention to the aristocracy in proportion to the other classes is easily disposed of. Madame Bibesco points out that when one considers Proust's own experience in life, which was the only thing he could hase his observations on, it will be seen that it was in great part limited to contact with the cultivated upper middle class and the aristocracy, and if then the part played in his work by the aristocracy is compared with that of the citizens in Combray, the Verdurin circle, and above all of the servants, who have admittedly received at Proust's hands a more masterly and detailed psychological analysis than in almost any other writer, it will be seen that the proportions are quite normal. This quite aside from the fact that, as Proust says, it can be quite as interesting to study the manners of a queen as of a dress-maker. To be taken more seriously is the charge that rather than a too great partiality for the aristocracy Proust shows an over-eagerness to belittle it, in other words that in his maturer days he became something of an "antisnob". There is undoubtedly some very severe criticism of high society in Proust's writings. But it is easy to exaggerate this severity by confusing with Proust's criticism of the aristocracy points that have more to do with his way of looking at human nature in general, and this some of Proust's critics seem at times to have done. De Luppé 1 2 1 complains that Proust could see no goodness of heart or purity of morals in the aristocracy, and thinks that if he had been admitted into real intimacy with the great people he met as a rule only at dinner-parties and teas, he would have seen that these aristocrats were "very much the same as the rest of humanity". To take up the first point: is hardness of heart really confined to the aristocracy in Proust's work? If many of Proust's nobles are mercenary and ruthless, a Mme. Bontemps is equally so, while Mme. Verdurin is shown repeatedly as revoltingly heartless, and in Françoise there is a kind of wanton cruelty that certainly equals anything shown in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. And if the callousness shown by the duke and duchess of Guermantes towards the death of their old friend Swann shocks us, the cruelty of his daughter's forgetfulness of him after his death is at least equally revolting. Hardness of heart on occasions is something almost universal in Proust's view of humanity — there is only one person in his work, Marcel's grandmother, who is shown as consistently good, magnanimous and kind in all her actions. The question might perhaps be put with some justice whether Proust's neurotic nature did not make him see rather too much of cruelty and faithlessness in human beings 1 2 2 , but it can hardly be said that he confined these characteristics to any one class. op. cit. p. 853. One must, however, guard against over-simplifying matters on this point. Proust's judgment of human nature is easily regarded as more gloomy than it really was, because, when he shows a person whom we had thought good and kind suddenly doing a very mean action, we are likely to assume that the goodne9S was merely hypocrisy, when Proust sees simply two conflicting, but equally true sides of one 121

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As to morality, the other point on which M. de Luppe thinks Proust shows a certain prejudice against the aristocracy, this too is a matter more of Proust's study of the all-too-human in general than of any one class. Certain vices are shown by him as startlingly frequent, but certainly not as confined to the aristocracy (one has only to think of the "petite bande" of young girls at Balbec, all taken from the bourgeoisie). And as to his observation that marital infidelity is more o p e n in the aristocracy than in the bourgeoisie, that is something that has been remarked on by many other writers and to which Proust clearly does not attach any very great importance. Proust could, of course, have contented himself with the conclusion that M. de Luppe defends, that people in the aristocracy are, in general, not very different from the rest of the world. In the same way one can say, of course, that Frenchmen and Germans and Englishmen have much the same fundamental human qualities. And in these fundamentals Proust shows his aristocracy very similar to the rest of the classes. But he wanted to do more. His aim was, as he said, to discover to what extent social rank is, like race and milieu, a "principle of differentiation". And in doing so he stepped on dangerous ground. Just as soon as one leaves the safe territory of the universality of the fundamental human impulses, and tries to illustrate the other truth, that between Germans and Frenchmen and Englishmen there are, alongside of certain common human characteristics, many very interesting differences, one is likely to be suspected of preferring one or the other of these nationalities to the others. And comparisons between the social classes are still more likely to be considered "invidious". But whatever may be the truth about the accuracy of Proust's observations — and who is to be the final judge? — the fact that he sought for differences may perfectly well be a sign, not that he had not reached the stage of objectivity which consists in noting the fundamental similarity of human beings in whatever class they are to be found, but that he had passed beyond it.

character. Proust's technique of character-drawing has something in c o m m o n with Dostoyevski's. H e shows g o o d n e s s of heart side by side with vulgarity of sentiment and cruelty, but he does not, it would s e e m , intend the occurrence of the latter b a d q u a l i t i e s to b e taken, in the c o m m o n h u m a n fashion of j u d g i n g , as d e s t r o y i n g the f o r m e r good ones. H e s p e a k s of " l e s êtres contradictoires, le méchant, le sensible, le délicat, le m u f l e , le d é s i n t é r e s s é , l ' a m b i t i e u x q u ' o n est tour à tour c h a q u e j o u r n é e " (A. D . II, p. 137), and c o m e s to the conclusion that a m o n g all the conflicting q u a l i t i e s of human b e i n g s p e r h a p s the m o s t c o m m o n is — la bonté! " S a n s doute ce n'est p a s le b o n sens q u i est 'la chose la p l u s r é p a n d u e ' , c'est l a bonté. Dans les coins les p l u s lointains, les p l u s p e r d u s , on s ' é m e r v e i l l e de la v o i r fleurir d'elle-même . . . M ê m e si cette b o n t é p a r a l y s é e p a r l'intérêt, n e s'exerce p a s , elle existe pourtant et c h a q u e f o i s q u ' a u c u n m o b i l e égoïste ne l ' e m p ê c h e d e l e f a i r e , p a r exemple, p e n d a n t la lecture d ' u n r o m a n o u d'un j o u r n a l , elle s'épanouit, se tourne, m ê m e dans le coeur d e celui q u i , assassin dans la vie, reste tendre c o m m e a m a t e u r d e f e u i l l e t o n s v e r s le f a i b l e , v e r s le j u s t e et le p e r s é c u t é . "

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W h a t are, then, t h e distinguishing characteristics of Proust's aristocrats? One merit h e grants t h e m is good manners. T h i s is nothing new, of course; we have seen Thackeray and Meredith m a k i n g t h e same concession to t h e English aristocracy. But Proust goes f a r t h e r t h a n they do in analysing wherein the difference consists between t h e manners of t h e different classes. At the very top of t h e scale Proust studies t h e m a n n e r s of an "altesse", exemplified in the Princesse de P a r m e and the Princesse de Luxembourg. These great ladies, who know themselves to be recognized as t h e highest of t h e high, are of an amiability so extreme t h a t it has the air of humility. T h e y take every o p p o r t u n i t y of making the people about t h e m forget t h e difference in rank t h a t separates t h e m — knowing well, of course, t h a t in spite of all their simplicity it will not be forgotten. T h u s t h e Princesse de P a r m e at Mme. de G u e r m a n t e s ' : Elle avait avec chacun cette charmante politesse qu'ont avec les inférieurs les gens bien élevés et à tout moment pour se rendre utile poussait sa chaise dans le but de laisser p l u s de place, tenait mes gants, m'offrait tous ces services, indignes des fières bourgeoises, et q u e rendent bien volontiers les souveraines. (G. II, p. 108.)

Proust's attitude toward this royal amiability is mixed of irony and admiration. H e knows t h a t the humility is really based on pride, and that, pushed to extremes, it can be ridiculous and really r u d e (as in t h e priceless episode of t h e Princesse de Luxembourg's buying biscuits f o r Marcel to give to his g r a n d m o t h e r — J. F. II, p. 138). B u t taking it all in all, it would seem that Proust preferred this attitude to t h e stiffness of t h e "fières bourgeoises", p r e f e r r e d the humility t h a t comes f r o m an excess of p r i d e to t h e p r i d e t h a t comes f r o m a secret fear of being t h o u g h t inferior. I n t h e many reports about Proust's own almost extravagant politeness one seems to see h i m p u t t i n g into practice this amiability which is above t h e petty f e a r of seeming to go more t h a n half way. Something of this attitude of the altesses, in m i l d e r form, is what distinguishes t h e politeness of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in general in its dealings with people of lower rank. "Se faire p a r d o n n e r d'être n o b l e " is, h e says, " j u s t e m e n t le talent, comme la seule occupation, des grands seigneurs et des grandes dames" (J. F. II, p. 132). T h e most attractive e m b o d i m e n t of aristocratic good manners is Saint-Loup. W i t h o u t t h e exaggerations of condescension shown by the royalties, h e has in his m a n n e r s (which spring incidentally f r o m a good heart) t h e special grace t h a t comes f r o m a similar lack of concern about seeming too amiable. Proust's analysis of Saint-Loup's politeness may be quoted h e r e because it shows so well his m a n n e r of p r o c e d u r e in differentiating his characters according to t h e i r social as opposed to individual characteristics. Ma pensée démêlait en Saint-Loup un être plus général q u e lui-même, le "noble", et qui comme u n esprit intérieur mouvait ses membres, ordonnait ses gestes et

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ses actions. . . . A r e t r o u v e r toujours en lui cet être antérieur, séculaire, cet aristocrate que R o b e r t aspirait justement à ne pas être, j ' é p r o u v a i s une v i v e j o i e . . . d'intelligence. Dans l'agilité morale et physique qui donnait tant de grâce à son amabilité, dans l'aisance avec laquelle il o f f r a i t sa v o i t u r e à ma grand'mère et l'y faisait monter, dans son adresse à sauter du siège quand il avait p e u r que j'eusse f r o i d , pour jeter son propre manteau sur mes épaules, j e ne sentais pas seulement la souplesse héréditaire des grands chasseurs qu'avaient été depuis des générations les ancêtres de ce j e u n e h o m m e qui ne p r é t e n d a i t qu'à l'intellectualité, leur dédain de la richesse qui, subsistant chez lui à côté du goût qu'il avait d'elle rien que pour mieux fêter ses amis, lui faisait m e t t r e si négligemment son luxe à leurs p i e d s ; j'y sentais surtout la certitude ou l'illusion qu'avaient eu ces grands seigneurs d'être "plus que les autres" grâce à quoi ils n'avaient pu léguer à Saint-Loup ce désir de montrer qu'on est "autant q u e les autres", cette peur de paraître trop empressé, qui lui était en effet v r a i m e n t inconnue et qui enlaidit de tant de laideur et de gaucherie la plus sincère amab i l i t é plébéienne." (J. F. II, p. 188. Cf. also G. II, pp. 96, 97.)

The exquisite manners that Proust gives Saint Loup happened in his case to correspond to real delicacy of heart. This is, however, by no means always the case with Proust's nobles. In many of the Guermantes, and especially in the Duke, Proust shows startling contrasts in this respect. After describing the splendid grace of the Guermantes' hospitality, he warns the reader that "cette politesse n'allait pas au delà de ce que le mot signifie" (G. II, p. 115), and makes, in this connection, one of the historical parallels he liked: Dans les manières de M. de Guermantes, homme attendrissant de gentillesse et r é v o l t a n t de dureté, esclave des plus petites obligations et délié des pactes les p l u s sacrés, j e r e t r o u v a i s encore intacte après plus de deux siècles cette déviation p a r t i c u l i è r e à la v i e de Cour sous Louis X I V et qui transporte les scrupules de conscience du d o m a i n e des affections et de la m o r a l i t é aux questions de p u r e forme. (G. II, p. 1 1 6 . )

It is probably in large measure owing to his fear that the naïver of his readers might be falsely inclined, from his just and generous description of the good manners of his more aristocratic characters, to believe in their moral superiority, that Proust sometimes gives a special emphasis to his revelations of the ruthless egoism that these good manners often accompanied, an emphasis which has led to the belief that he considered hard-heartedness something that distinguishes the aristocracy from the other classes. It would be misunderstanding Proust, however, to think that because he shows good manners frequently hand in hand with callousness and moral frivolity, he considers the good manners worthless. Given two ruthless egoists, Proust prefers the one with good breeding. And if, in considering this regard for forms more seriously, he concludes that it can hamper the development of really g r e a t qualities, so that the great genius in any field must first cease to be a man of the world, still he is careful to remind us of the advantages this external grace has over ordinary vulgarity, as in the passage referring to the punctiliousness of Saint-Loup and M. de Guermantes in always referring to the "Empereur" Guillaume in 210

the midst of the war, the d a y :

when insulting nicknames were the fashion of

D e u x h o m m e s du m o n d e restant seuls vivants dans une île déserte où ils n'auraient à f a i r e p r e u v e de b o n n e s façons p o u r personne, se reconnaîtraient à ces traces d ' é d u c a t i o n , c o m m e deux latinistes citeraient correctement d u V i r g i l e .

Saint-Loup

n'eût j a m a i s p u , m ê m e torturé par les Allemands, dire a u t r e m e n t q u e l ' E m p e r e u r Guillaume. l'esprit.

Et ce savoir-vivre est m a l g r é tout l'indice de g r a n d e s entraves p o u r

C e l u i q u i ne sait pas les rejeter reste un h o m m e du m o n d e .

élégante

médiocrité

est

d'ailleurs

délicieuse

—

tout ce q u i s'y allie de générosité cachée et d'héroisme i n e x p r i m é — à de la v u l g a r i t é

Cette

surtout

avec côté

d e B l o c h , à la fois pleutre et f a n f a r o n , q u i criait à Saint-

L o u p : " T u ne p o u r r a i s p a s dire G u i l l a u m e tout court. d é j à tu te m e t s à plat ventre devant l u i ! "

C'est ça, tu as la f r o u s s e , ( T . R . I, p. 69.)

T o complete our review of the minute analysis Proust makes of the manners of the aristocracy, it must be added that he also records many cases of b a d manners. T h e gracious amiability of the Princesse de P a r m e was, he tells us, not always the manner of royalties. " J ' a i connu des altesses et des majestés d'une autre sorte, reines qui jouent à la reine, et parlent non selon les habitudes de leurs congénères mais comme les reines dans S a r d o u " (G. II, p. 106). T h e Duc de Guermantes is shown at times as extremely vulgar and tactless. He represents, it is true, a rather interesting special case: the too-rich m a n who happens to be of an ancient race but who shows many characteristics in common with other rich men who are not of such a race. " M . de Guermantes fût par certains côtés fort ordinaire, et eût m ê m e des ridicules d'homme trop riche, l ' o r g u e i l d ' u n p a r v e n u q u ' i l n ' é t a i t p a s " (G. II, p. 114). B u t at the f a m o u s concert arranged by Charlus at Mme. Verdurin's we see the whole coterie Guermantes behaving like badly brought-up children, and f u l l y deserving Proust's description of them as the " f o u l e aussi m a l élevée q u ' é l é g a n t e " (P. II, p. 62). If, then, Proust concedes the virtue of manners to the aristocracy, and shows it in some of its most attractive forms, it is not that he thinks of this virtue as being exercised all the time, nor by all of them, but as adding a supreme grace to real delicacy of heart such as Saint-Loup possessed, and as mitigating, or at any rate concealing, the essential vulgarity of sentiment of a D u k e de Guermantes, which in another class would have been more p a i n f u l l y visible. In this scrupulous weighing of all that is involved in the commonplace statement that the aristocracy has good manners there is surely not much basis for complaining that Proust saw the top regions of society too much in black and white. H e goes much farther than Meredith — who, in The Amazing Marriage, shows himself essentially in accord with Proust in his recognition of the charm of aristocratic good manners and of their limitations — in analysing just what the charm and the limitations consist in. T h e r e is also certainly very little of the " d é n i g r e m e n t " that M. Seillière sees in Proust's mature judgment of the aristocracy in his portrayal 211

of Saint-Loup's chivalrous heroism in the war, in which he also generously admits that something of the special grace which differentiated SaintLoup's heroism from the equal heroism of many other humbler soldiers was due to his traditions and heritage as an aristocrat. Here, too, Proust is exceedingly careful not to confuse matters. The modesty with which Saint-Loup conceals his bravery and presents his efforts to be returned to the front, when he could perfectly easily have remained in the rear, as something to be taken quite for granted, was, Proust says, typical of the self-effacing heroism of the real front soldier as compared to the loudvoiced heroes safe behind the lines, and his way of referring, in his letters from the front, to Nietzsche and Wagner and Schumann with admiration at a time when a German word or name was tabu, was characteristic of the freedom from stupid chauvinism of the men who were actually doing the fighting, of "cette indépendance des gens du front qui n'avaient pas la même peur de prononcer un nom allemand que ceux de l'arrière" (T. R. I, p. 82). But at the same time Proust sees also in these characteristics something akin to the good breeding that Saint-Loup showed in ordinary life and which he had from his traditions as a man of the world, as a "Guermantes". Habitué par une bonne éducation suprême à émonder sa conduite de toute apologie, de toute invective, de toute phrase, il avait évité devant l'ennemi, comme au moment de la mobilisation, ce qui aurait pu assurer sa vie, par cet effacement de soi devant les actes que symbolisaient toutes ses manières, jusqu'à sa manière de fermer la portière de mon fiacre quand il me reconduisait, tête nue chaque foi que je sortais de chez lui. (T. R. I, p. 209.)

And in the heroic death on the field of battle of this descendant of so many great warriors of the past Proust sees a kind of appropriateness that is not merely aesthetic, but is explained by the fact that Marcel had from the beginning sensed that Saint-Loup was, in pursuing the rather doctrinaire ideas of the intellectuals he admired, not being true to his nature, in which there was a great capacity for noble chivalry but not, in spite of his undoubtedly more than average intelligence, the subtlety and critical sense that permitted of real intellectual originality. Débarrassée de ses livres, la tourelle féodale était redevenue militaire. Et ce Guermantes était mort plus lui-même, ou plutôt plus de sa race en laquelle il n'était plus qu'un Guermantes, comme ce fut symboliquement visible à son enterrement dans l'église Saint-Hilaire de Combray, toute tendue de tentures noires où se détachait en rouge sous la couronne fermée, sans initiales de prénoms ni titres, le G. du Guermantes que par la mort il était redevenu. (T. R. I, p. 214.)

Proust's scientific curiosity in the traits distinguishing the different classes of society is perhaps seen at its best in his analysis of the intellectual characteristics of the Guermantes taken as typical of one group of the aristocracy. In spite of a great deal of superficiality, there was in these worldly circles a distinguishing s t y l e in intellectual matters to which Proust grants an undeniable charm, although he points out its limitations. 212

T h e i r most conspicuous characteristic is their aversion to pedantry and affectation. A Cottard and a Brichot, disposing of a great wealth of knowledge, but pedantic and frequently ridiculous in their manner of displaying it, were not eligible for admission to these circles, in which knowledge and talent were respected (we are speaking only of the best of these salons), but only if they were worn with grace. Ce que la duchesse de Guermantes plaçait au-dessus de tout, ce n'était pas l'intelligence, c'était, selon elle, cette forme supérieure, plus exquise de l'intelli(G. II, p. 136.) gence élevée jusqu'à une variété verbale de talent — l'esprit.

At its best this distaste for exaggeration, affectation, doctrinairism had something akin to the c l a s s i c a l spirit. It was at any rate definitely anti-romantic in the broad sense of the term. Proust speaks frequently of the "esprit juste-milieu des gens du monde". — It is, incidentally, probably this esprit juste-milieu that accounts for there being so few a n t i s n o b s among Proust's aristocrats. Saint-Loup, who had tinges of this fault, as we have seen, was disapproved of by the other members of his class precisely because he sinned against this spirit. This spirit made of a salon such as Mme. de Guermantes' a more agreeable place than, for instance, that of Mme. Verdurin, where infinitely more talent was assembled but not made "gesellschaftsfähig". This intellectual atmosphere, in which gracefulness and wit are more important than profundity, has a strong power of seduction on fine spirits like Swann, and Proust himself seems undoubtedly to have felt its attraction. " S i dans ce salon tant d'ambitions intellectuelles et même de nobles efforts avaient été enterrés pour jamais, du moins, de leur poussière, la plus rare floraison de mondanité avait pris naissance" (G. I I , p. 136). I f Proust had been speaking in Meredithian terms, he would probably have said that these groups embodied, if only in an imperfect way, something of the " C o m i c Spirit", which was, as Meredith drew it, also antipathetic to all pedantry, over-solemnity and pose. T h e fact that the Guermantes, who were at the top of the social scale in Proust's picture of society, were also the best representatives of this variety of intelligence, might possibly give the misleading impression that Proust considers these two kinds of distinction as always connected. He is at some pains to dispel this idea and even says at one point that "les mérites spirituels d'un salon et son élégance sont généralement en rapports inverses plutôt que directs" ( J . F. II, p. 11). And if he is rather free with depreciating remarks about the general level of culture in " l e monde", speaking often of the "niaiserie des gens du monde", of the "néant de goût" on which their judgments of art and literature are usually based, and referring to them as the real "illettrés" of society, it is perhaps because of his anxiety to avoid this misconception of his purpose. T h i s "rare floraison de mondanité" is included by him in his study of the aristocracy not because h e considers it typical of the average mentality in that class 213

but because he looks on it as arising, when it does arise, out of those circles and not of others. Proust's final judgment of this variety of intelligence is similar to his attitude toward the good manners of the nobility. If he recognizes that "l'amabilité de l'aristocratie est une comédie" (A. D. II, p. 167) he does not for that reason find bad manners and unamiableness more attractive. So he defends this intellectual elegance against those who cannot see how much of an improvement it is, at its best, over much of the fad-ridden intellectuality of the day; one of his grievances against Saint-Loup is that he had no understanding of the kind of worldly intelligence that his own father had and which, of its kind, was infinitely superior to the secondrate theories of art and politics that so impressed the son (J. F. II, p. 184). But on the other hand, just as he does not forget that mere good manners are to be classed below true delicacy and greatness of heart, he points out the limitations of this mentality. It remains an "elegant mediocrity" when compared with the really high regions of the intellect. It is incompatible with genius, which so often offends against the rules of measure and decorum. And it brings a kind of narrowness of judgment which caused a Mme. de Villeparisis, who had had the privilege of knowing so many great men personally in her father's home, to prefer those of mediocre talent to the somewhat vulgar and awkward geniuses whose names were to become immortal. Our judgment of the significance of Proust's criticism of the aristocracy will necessarily be influenced by our answer to the question: What group or groups does he consider superior to the aristocracy? M. Seillière thinks that "Proust conserve et nourrit en lui un orgueil bourgeois qui se manifeste par des traits f r a p p a n t s 1 2 3 " but he does not succeed in showing very convincingly Proust's preference for the bourgeoisie. Proust grants the bourgeoisie virtues and faults in rather equal degrees, but one cannot avoid the impression that its virtues, though granted by his reason, appeal even less to his instincts than those of the aristocracy, and this impression is confirmed by the explicit confession of his preferences at one point in his story: J e n'avais jamais fait de différence entre les ouvriers, les bourgeois et les grands seigneurs, et j'aurais pris indifféremment les uns et les autres pour amis, — avec une certaine préférence pour les ouvriers, et après cela pour les grands seigneurs . . . (S. G. II, p. 95.)

The fact that the one person in the book who seems to have a really great soul, Marcel's grandmother, is a bourgeoise has little significance, since she is drawn so expressly as an exceptional nature, and is quite as superior to the other middle-class ladies of the book, such as Mme. Bontemps, for instance, as to the duchesses. It is probably in any case a mistake to seek for Proust's preferences in any c l a s s of society. Proust believes in an élite, but it is an élite 123

214

op. cit. pp. 97/103.

that has laws of its own, one of which is that its members, though they may have sprung from any class, must have l e f t behind them the trammels of their group, whether the elegant superficiality of the nobility, the prejudices and conventionality of the bourgeoisie, the plebeian resentments of the people, or the equally hampering conventions of bohemian and intellectual groups. It is the élite of genius, of great artists and great thinkers. Even the virtue of gracious amiability that Proust had given to the better among his aristocrats, in comparison to the other classes, receives only a secondary place when he compares'it to that of a great artist: II (Elstir, supérieure A côté de soit-elle, a

the great painter) prodigua pour moi une amabilité qui à celle de Saint-Loup que celle-ci à l'affabilité d'un petit celle d'un grand artiste, l'amabilité d'un grand seigneur, si l'air d'un jeu d'acteur, d'une simulation. (J. F. III,

était aussi bourgeois. charmante p. 88.)

When it is kept in mind that Proust was measuring by this high standard, his judgment of the classes of society gains its due perspective, and whatever severity his criticism of the aristocracy may have had becomes perfectly natural and loses anything that could suggest "dénigrement" or resentment.

215

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Alberts-Arndt, B., Die englische Gesellschaft im Spiegel der Romane von George Meredith, K a r l s r u h e 1931. B a l f o u r , P., Society Racket, A Critical Study of Modern Social Life, Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1934. B a n n i n g , M. C., In Defense of Snobbery, Harper's Monthly Magazine, vol. 162, N. Y., April 1931. B e a c h , J. W., T h e Comic Spirit in George Meredith, New York 1911. B e h m e n b u r g , W., Der Snobbismus bei Thackeray, Düsseldorf 1933. B i b e s c o , Au bal avec Marcel Proust (Cahiers Marcel Proust IV), Paris 1928. B o u l e n g e r , J., Sous Louis-Philippe, Les Dandys, Paris 1932. B o u l e n g e r , M., Eloge du snobisme, Paris 1926. C o p p é e , F., Snobisme (Oeuvres Complètes, Prose t. V I I ) , pp. 254/263, Paris 1898. C u r t i u s , E. R., Französischer Geist im neuen Europa, Berlin 1925. D a u d e t , Lucien, Autour de soixante lettres de Marcel Proust (Cahiers Marcel P r o u s t V ) , P a r i s 1929. D i c k , E., George Meredith, Drei Versuche, Berlin 1910. D o r l a n d , W. A., What Billingsgate T h o u g h t : A Country Gentleman's Ideas on Snobbery, Boston 1919. D u n g e r , H., Snobs, Zeitschrift des Allgemeinen Deutschen Sprachvereins, XV. Jg., No. 12, p. 322. D u r a n d , A., (pseud. H e n r y Gréville), Villoré, Snobs de Province, Paris 1898. E i c h 1 e r , A., Der Gentleman in der englischen Literatur, Zeitschrift f. d. deutschösterreichischen Gymnasien, Vienna, 69. Jg., 5—10. Heft, 1919. E l l i s , S. M., George Meredith, His Life and Friends, L o n d o n 1920. F a g u e t , E., Snobs, (Propos Littéraires, 4« Série), Paris 1907. d e F i e r s , R., A Snobville Plage, Les Annales Politiques et Littéraires, t. 81, p. 97 (20 July, 1923). G a l l a n d , R., George M e r e d i t h : Les cinquante premières années, Paris 1932. G u i c h e s , G., Snob, Comédie en quatre actes, Paris 1897. d ' H a b l o v i l l e , C., Le snobisme, La Revue Générale, Bruxelles, Année 50, t. 99 (June 1914). H u y s m a n s , J.-K., A rebours (Oeuvres complètes V I I ) , Paris 1929. K o e h l e r , G., Der Dandysmus im französischen Roman des XIX. J a h r h u n d e r t s , Halle 1911. L e o p o l d , L., Prestige, ein gesellschaftspsycholcgischer Versuch, Berlin 1913. L e v e r , C., One of T h e m , Leipzig 1860 (Tauchnitz). d e L u p p é , A., Chez Marcel Proust, Snobs et Mondains, Le Correspondant, t. 310, pp. 828/854 (25 March, 1928). L y a 11, A., It Isn't Done, or the F u t u r e of Taboo among the British Islanders, London 1932. M a c n a u g h t a n , S., Snobs, Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 182, pp. 672/679 (Nov. 1907). M a n n , O., Der m o d e r n e Dandy, Berlin 1925. M e l v i l l e , L., William Makepeace Thackeray, London 1899 (in one volume 1927). M e r e d i t h , G., Works, London 1902/08 (Archibald Constable). M e r e d i t h , G., Letters of George Meredith, Collected and Edited by h i s Son, L o n d o n 1912.

217

P i e r r e - Q u i n t , L., Comment travaillait Proust, Paris 1928; Marcel fronst, Sa vie, son oeuvre, Paris 1927. P r i e s t l y , J. B., George Meredith (English Men of Letters), London 192t. P r o u s t , Marcel, A la recherche du temps perdu, (NRF), Paris 19271. P r o u s t , Marcel, Chroniques, Paris 1927. P r o u s t , Marcel, Pastiches et Melanges, Paris 1925. P r o u s t , Marcel, Les plaisirs et Ies jours, Paris 1927. P r o u s t , Marcel, Lettres ä Robert de Montesquiou (Correspondance geierale de Marcel Proust), Paris 1930. S a n t a y a n a , G., Apology for Snobs, Athenaeum, 29 August 1919. S c h a u b , E., W. M. Thackeray's Entwicklung zum Schriftsteller, Basel 19(2. S e i l i i e r e , E., Marcel Proust, Paris 1931. S h e r a r d , J. L., Snobs, Harper's Weekly, 8 Jan. 1916, p. 48 ff. S p i e l m a n n , M. H., The Hitherto Unidentified Contributions of W. M. Thackeray to "Punch", London 1899. S t e r n h e i m , C., Der Snob, Komödie in 3 Aufzügen, Munich 1920. T h a c k e r a y , W. M., Works, London 1893/94 (Smith Elder). T h a c k e r a y , W. M., A Disputed Genealogy, Punch, No. 305, vol. XI—XH, f. 204 (15 May 1847). T h a c k e r a y , W. M., A Legend of the Rhine, . . . 2 T h a c k e r a y , W. M., The Book of Snobs, ed. w. Introd. by George Saintsbury, Oxford Press (no date). T h a c k e r a y , W. M., Thackeray's Stray Papers, ed. by L. Melville, 1901. T r o l l o p e , A., W. M. Thackeray (English Men of Letters). U s i n g e r , F., Die französischen Bezeichnungen des Modehelden im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Gießener Beiträge zur romanischen Philologie IV), Gießen 1921. V e b e r , P., Chez les Snobs, 1897. V e b 1 e n , T., The Theory of the Leisure Class, London 1924. W a 11 h e r , E., Entstehungsgeschichte von Thackerays Vanity Fair, Pakestra LXXXIX, 1908. W e r f e l , Der Snobismus als geistige Weltmacht, Jahrbuch des Paul Zsolnay Verlags, Berlin, Wien, Leipzig 1928. W h i b I e y , C., W. M. Thackeray, Edinburgh and London 1903.

Collections

and a n o n y m o u s

articles:

Die Entstehung des „Snob", Eine Thackeray-Erinnerung zum 18. Juli. Dresdner ITachNachrichten, 19. Juli 1911. Hommage ä Marcel Proust (Les Cahiers Marcel Proust I), Paris 1926. Marcel Proust (Les Contemporains), Paris 1926. Preface to a New Book of Snobs, The Definition of the Snob, Saturday Review, D«c. 9, 1883, Jan. 19, 1884. Snobismus, Kölnische Zeitung, 1. Februar 1913. Snobs, Kölnische Zeitung, 13. Mai 1900. What Kind of a Snob are you?, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 129, Febr. 1922. 1 The different parts of this work are referred to in the text by the abbreviations used by Charles Daudet in his Répertoire des personnages de "A la recherche du tenps perdu" (Paris 1928), i.e.: S. Du côté de chez Swann, J. F. A l'ombre des Jeunes Files en Fleurs, G. Du côté de Guermantes, S. G. Sodome et Gomorrhe, P. La Prisonnère, A. D. Albertine disparue, T. R. Le Temps retrouvé. 2 Page references to the Book of Snobs refer to this edition, which, unlike the collected works, includes the passages in the Snob Papers that were omitted when hey first appeared in book form.

218

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